What is ADSI?

Enumerate Active Directory using ADSI PowerShell Type Accelerator

Type accelerators are aliases for .NET framework classes. They allow you to access specific .NET classes without having to explicitly type the entire class name. Luckily, two classes we need have corresponding type accelerators: adsi ↔ System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry adsisearcher ↔ System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher

ADSI

$domain = New-Object -TypeName System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry

<aside> ℹ️

If we don’t specify any argument, by default this command sets the domain of interest with the one to which the client is currently connected

</aside>

ADSISearcher

Create an ADSI Object

$adsiSearcherObj = New-Object -TypeName System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher

<aside> ℹ️

If we don’t specify any argument, by default this command sets the domain of interest with the one to which the client is currently connected

</aside>

Using Get-Member we will obtain all the properties and method callable on this object:

If we want to specify a domain we need to add a parameter.

$adsiSearcherObj = New-Object -TypeName System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher -ArgumentList @([ADSI]"LDAP://dc=domain,dc=local")

or

$adsiSearcherObj = [adsisearcher][ADSI]"LDAP://dc=domain,dc=local"

Connect to a remote domain using credentials