Over the last few years, efforts have been underway by various Samba Team members to implement various aspects of the Microsoft Remote Procedure Call (MSRPC) system. This system is used for most network-related operations between Windows NT machines, including remote management, user authentication, and print spooling. Although initially this work was done to aid the implementation of Primary Domain Controller (PDC) functionality in Samba, it has also yielded a body of code that can be used for other purposes.

Winbind uses various MSRPC calls to enumerate domain users and groups and to obtain detailed information about individual users or groups. Other MSRPC calls can be used to authenticate NT domain users and to change user passwords. By directly querying a Windows PDC for user and group information, Winbind maps the NT account information onto UNIX user and group names.