ACTIVE DIRECTORY TRUSTS

A trust is a relationship, which you establish between domains that makes it possible
for users in the domain to be authenticated by the other domain.

All Active Directory trusts between domains within a forest are transitive, two-way trusts.
Therefore, both domains in a trust relationship are trusted. This means that if Domain A
trusts Domain B and Domain B trusts Domain C, then users from Domain C can access
resources in Domain A.

Trusted domain objects (TDO) are objects that represent each trust relationship within a
particular domain. Each time that a trust is established, a unique TDO is created and stored
in its domain. Domain trust TDO stores attributes such as trust transitivity, type, and the
reciprocal domain names. Forest trust TDO store additional attributes to identify all the
trusted namespaces from its partner forest. These attributes include domain tree names,
user principal name (UPN) suffixes, service principal name (SPN) suffixes, and security
identifier (SID) namespaces.

Trust Types

(a) External. Nontransitive. Could be one-way or two-way. External trusts

provide access to resources that are located on a domain that is located in a
separate forest that is not joined by a forest trust.

When to create an external trust

External trusts are necessary when users need access to resources in a domain that
is located in a separate forest that is not joined by a forest trust.

When there is a trust between a domain in a forest and a domain outside that forest,
security principals from the external domain can access resources in the internal
 domain. ADDS creates a foreign security principal object in the internal domain to
represent each security principal from the trusted external domain. These foreign
security principals can become members of domain local groups in the internal
domain. Domain local groups can have members from domains outside the forest.

(b) Realm. (Transitive or nontransitive). Could be one-way or two-way. Use

realm trusts to form a trust relationship between a non-Windows Kerberos realm and
an Active Directory domain. This trust relationship allows cross-platform
interoperability with security services that are based on other versions of the
Kerberos V5 protocol, for example, UNIX and MIT implementations.

(c) Forest. (Transitive). Could be one-way or two-way. Use forest trusts to

share resources between forests. If a forest trust is a two-way trust, authentication
requests that are made in either forest can reach other forest.

When to create a forest trust

You can create a forest trust between forest root domains if the forest functional level
is Windows server 2003 or higher. A forest trust provides a one-way or two-way,
transitive trust relationship between every domain in each forest.

(d) Shortcut. (Transitive). Could be one-way or two way. Use shortcut trusts to
improve user logon times between two domains within an Active Directory forest.
This is useful when two domains are separated by two domain trees.

Trust Transitivity

Transitivity determines whether a trust can be extended outside the two domains between
which the trust was formed. You can use a transitive trust to extend trust relationships with
other domains. You can use a nontransitive trust to deny trust relationship with other
domains.

(a) Transitive trust. Each time that you create a new domain in a forest, a
two-way, transitive trust is automatically created between the new domain and its
parent domain. If child domains are added to the new domain, the trust path flows
upward through the domain hierarchy, extending the initial trust path that is created
between the new domain and its parent domain.

Authentication request follows these trust paths.

Therefore, accounts from any domain in the
forest can be authenticated at any other domain
in the forest. With a single logon process,
accounts with the proper permissions can
access resources in any domain in the forest.

(b) Nontransitive trust. A nontransitive trust is restricted by the two

domains in the trust relationship. It does not flow to any other domains in the forest.
Nontransitive trusts are one-way by default.
Trust Direction

The trust type and its assigned direction affect the trust path that is used for authentication.
A trust path is a series of trust relationships that authentication requests must follow
between domains. Before a user can access a resource in another domain, the security
system on domain controllers must determine whether the trusting domain has a trust
relationship with the trusted domain. To determine this, the security system computes the
trust path between a domain controller in the trusting domain and a domain controller in the
trusted domain.

(a) One way trust. A one-way trust is a unidirectional authentication path that
is created between two domains. This means that in a one way trust between
Domain A and Domain B, users in Domain A can access resources in Domain B.
However, users in Domain B cannot access resources in Domain A.

(b) Two-way trust. All domains trusts in an Active Directory forest are two-
way, transitive trusts. When a new child domain is created, a two way, transitive trust
is automatically created between the new child domain and the parent domain. In a
two-way trust, Domain A trusts Domain B and Domain B trusts Domain A. this means
that authentication requests can be passed between the two domains in both
directions.