How to Save the DNS Cheese. Protect AD-Integrated DNS Zones from Accidental Deletions

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As a quick follow on to our recent post about DNS deletion auditing, here's an ounce of prevention for you - well actually about 3 tons worth - courtesy of Brent Whitlow, Bryan Zink and your blogger-de jure, Hilde.

Our co-workers, peers and others 'out there' have covered this but we wanted to get our own 'variation on a theme' post out as a logical follow up (or some might say prequel) to the DNS auditing post.

Here are the links to two of the other great posts:

Let's roll …

**** EDIT ****

As with any changes, folks should always exercise caution and test things out in a lab BEFORE implementing any changes to production. I normally call this out in my posts but I didn't do that here.  My sincerest apologies. 

Additionally, as with most code, the PowerShell code found here should be considered 'sample code.'

**** END EDIT ***** 

For DNS zones in the legacy "domain" partition:

You can use the AD Users and Computers GUI to expose one of the best checkboxes in the history of Active Directory… or, further below, we can use PowerShell (of course!)

 

 

The zones in the Domain-wide and Forest-wide Application Partitions are stored elsewhere within AD:

To protect those, we use PowerShell to toggle the 'protectedfromaccidentaldeletion' attribute on zone objects in application partitions since they aren't exposed anywhere in the GUI. Yet J (hey Product Group, did you catch that subtle feature request?)

 

Domain-wide application partitions

Enumerate all vulnerable zones into a nice UI box:

Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=lab" -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $False} | Select name,protectedfromaccidentaldeletion | out-gridview

 

 

Protect 'em

Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=lab" -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $False} | Set-ADObject –ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true

 

Check 'em

Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=lab" -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $True} | Select name,protectedfromaccidentaldeletion | out-gridview

 

 

 

Forest-wide application partitions

Enumerate all vulnerable zones into a nice UI box:

Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=lab" -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $False} | Select name,protectedfromaccidentaldeletion | out-gridview

 

Protect 'em

Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=lab" -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $False} | Set-ADObject –ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true

 

Check 'em

Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=lab" -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $True} | Select name,protectedfromaccidentaldeletion | out-gridview

 

 

 

Legacy domain partition

Enumerate all vulnerable zones into a nice UI box:

 Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "CN=MicrosoftDNS,CN=System,DC=domain,DC=lab" -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $False} | Select name,protectedfromaccidentaldeletion | out-gridview

 

Protect 'em

Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "CN=MicrosoftDNS,CN=System,DC=domain,DC=lab " -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $False} | Set-ADObject –ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true

 

Check 'em

Get-ADObject -Filter 'ObjectClass -like "dnszone"' -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "CN=MicrosoftDNS,CN=System,DC=domain,DC=lab " -properties ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion | where {$_.ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion -eq $True} | Select name,protectedfromaccidentaldeletion | out-gridview

 

 

NOTE: Should you need to delete one of the zones in the future, simply flip the 'ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion' attribute for the target zone to FALSE with PowerShell:

Set-ADObject "DC=DOMAIN_APP_PARTITION.COM,DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=lab" protectedFromAccidentalDeletion $False

So there you have a few resources to help you … now get out there and protect the cheese!