What's in a Name?

Plumbing under my sink

I had a problem.  A Microsoft SQL Server job I created needed to send a file via secure FTP. Since Microsoft's SSIS doesn't believe that secure FTP exists, I had to use a third-party application.

It works wonderfully.  Except (there is always an exception) the first run of the application prompts you to cache the fingerprint of the server's key in the registry.  If the fingerprint isn't in the registry, the process fails when it runs in batch mode.

Since I don't have the service account's password, I can't run the application under its credentials to store the fingerprint.  But, it's really a simple hack to copy the registry keys into the service account's registry.  Except the registry doesn't show the user hives by name, but by their SID(windows Security Identifier.)

You'd think that you would have a simple a command to tell you what the SID is for an account. There is if it's local, or if the account is currently logged in.  Our service accounts are domain accounts.  If I could log in as the service account, I wouldn't be hacking the registry.

So how do you find them?  Well, Windows creates a profile for each account.  If you go to Hkey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList, you'll see one entry for each profile.  The entry is the SID, but under each profile, you'll see the ProfileImagePath key, which will have a plain-text username for the account.