Lion Cipher Lab

Run your own LDAP directory with OpenLDAP — and finally understand how directory identity works

• Identity & Access Management
• Intermediate
• ~60 min
• Free · no account required

Why it matters

Almost every enterprise you will ever work in keeps its people, groups and machines in a directory, and almost every one of those directories is queried with LDAP — Active Directory, OpenLDAP, FreeIPA, Oracle Internet Directory, the user store behind your SSO portal. When an application 'authenticates against LDAP', when a SIEM enriches an alert with a username, when a pentester dumps the org chart from a domain controller, when an engineer writes memberOf into an access rule, LDAP is what is happening. Most people learn it by osmosis from half-understood config files and never build the…

What you'll learn

• LDAP fundamentals
• directory services
• reading and writing LDIF
• LDAP search filters
• bind authentication
• mapping LDAP concepts onto Active Directory

Steps in this lab

1. The mental model: what a directory is, and what LDAP is
2. Install slapd on a throwaway VM and set your base DN
3. Prove the directory is alive with your first query
4. Create the tree's structure with LDIF
5. Populate it: two people and a group
6. Query it like a professional: LDAP search filters
7. Authenticate: what 'the app authenticates against LDAP' really means
8. The uncomfortable part: that password crossed the wire in cleartext
9. Where this fits: Active Directory, SSO, and when NOT to reach for LDAP

Open the full interactive lab →