Local Machine user in a domain

[seaport]

I am working on a SQL Server 2005 server but I am not the network admin. Both my workstation - station1 and the SQL Server - SQL1 are in the same domain. A local user - user1 - is added to statation1 and SQL1 with same user name and password. I logged into station1 as user1 and found out that station1/user1 has access to SQL1.

As I understand, SQL1 knows that "station1/user1" is not a domain account and then basically validate the user name and password from "station1/user1" against its local accounts. This is how a user gets access to another machine in a Workgroup environment. But I am surprised to see that it also works in a domain.

Here is my questions.
What is the technical term for this kind of authentication - by matching the user name and passwords? Is this part of so-called "Integrated Authentication"?

Thanks in advance.

Seaport

 

[SimonDavies]

Yes, a better explanation can be found here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Windows_Authentication

Essentially what happens is that because the username and passwords are the same it just authenticates against it and doesn't care that the accounts come from two different objects, as far as it's concerned the username and password that it's authenticating are the same as those that have permissions on the local machine.. so it lets it through.

Simon

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[seaport]

Simon,

Thanks for the reply. It took me some time to read through those wiki articles.

As I understand, because I am using a Windows domain (windows 2003) so it has to be Integrated Windows Authentication, which can be either Kerberos or NTLM. To go further detailed, "station1/user1" is authenticated by SQL1 using NTLM, and a domain account like "DomainName/user1" will be authenticated using Kerberos.

Seaport