Network access: Let Everyone permissions apply to anonymous users

Updated: November 15, 2012

Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This security policy reference topic for the IT professional describes the best practices, location, values, policy management and security considerations for this policy setting.

Reference

This policy setting determines what additional permissions are granted for anonymous connections to the computer. If you enable this policy setting, anonymous users can enumerate the names of domain accounts and shared folders and perform certain other activities. This capability is convenient, for example, when an administrator wants to grant access to users in a trusted domain that does not maintain a reciprocal trust.

By default, the token that is created for anonymous connections does not include the Everyone SID. Therefore, permissions that are assigned to the Everyone group do not apply to anonymous users.

Possible values

• Enabled

  The Everyone SID is added to the token that is created for anonymous connections, and anonymous users can access any resource for which the Everyone group has been assigned permissions.

• Disabled

  The Everyone SID is removed from the token that is created for anonymous connections.

• Not defined

Best practices

1. Set this policy to Disabled.

Location

GPO_name\Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Polices\Security Options

Default values

The following table lists the actual and effective default values for this policy. Default values are also listed on the policy’s property page.

Operating system version differences

There are no differences in this policy between operating systems beginning with Windows Server 2003.

Policy management

This section describes features and tools that are available to help you manage this policy.

Restart requirement

None. Changes to this policy become effective without a computer restart when they are saved locally or distributed through Group Policy.

Security considerations

This section describes how an attacker might exploit a feature or its configuration, how to implement the countermeasure, and the possible negative consequences of countermeasure implementation.

Vulnerability

An unauthorized user could anonymously list account names and shared resources and use the information to attempt to guess passwords, perform social engineering attacks, or launch DoS attacks.

Countermeasure

Disable the Network access: Let Everyone permissions apply to anonymous users setting.

Potential impact

None. This is the default configuration.