Tips for DevOps Pipeline Automation & Bash Scripting DevOps CI/CD pipelines on platforms such as GitHub or Azure DevOps are basically shell scripts that run in the cloud and are triggered by events, e.g., a Git push. This article explains common mistakes with pipeline scripts and how to avoid them. Read more
restic: Encrypted Offsite Backup for Your Homeserver This article explains how to set up restic (with the resticprofile wrapper) for automated scheduled backups of your home server. Read more
Upgrading Ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 & PHP 7.4 to 8.1 for WordPress This post describes how I upgraded our webserver running WordPress on Apache from Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS to 22.04.1 LTS and PHP from 7.4 to 8.1. Read more
ownCloud Infinite Scale With OpenID Connect Authentication for Home Networks This article explains how to set up ownCloud Infinity Scale with OpenID Connect authentication to Authelia or authentik. Read more
authentik: Authentication, SSO, User Management & Password Reset for Home Networks This is my second article on how to set up a modern user management and authentication system for services on your internal home network. In the previous article, I used Authelia as IdP; this article presents an alternative configuration based on authentik. Read more
Authelia & lldap: Authentication, SSO, User Management & Password Reset for Home Networks This article explains how to set up a simple but modern user management and authentication system for services on your internal home network. The solution supports important security features like two-factor authentication and single sign-on, and only requires minimal maintenance due to self-service password reset. Read more
Automatic HTTPS Certificates for Services on Internal Home Network This article explains how to set up automatic HTTPS certificates via Let’s Encrypt for services on your internal home network without opening a port on your firewall. It’s part of my series on home automation that shows how to install, configure, and run a home server with (dockerized or virtualized) services such as Home Assistant and OwnCloud. Read more
Installing Proxmox as Docker Host on Intel NUC Home Server This is my first article in what is poised to become a series on installing, configuring, and running a home server with (dockerized or virtualized) services such as Home Assistant and OwnCloud. Read more
DNS Exfiltration & Tunneling: How it Works & DNSteal Demo Setup DNS is a protocol that lends itself to abuse because it's largely unmonitored and unrestricted. This article explains how data exfiltration from a corporate network via DNS works and shows how to set up a working exfiltration demo with DNSteal. Read more
Windows Installer Errors 2503 & 2502: Called RunScript when not marked in progress & Called InstallFinalize when no install in progress This is a quick post on how to troubleshoot situations where you get error 2503 (Called RunScript when not marked in progress) followed by error 2502 (Called InstallFinalize when no […] Read more
Identifying MS Teams Application Instances & Counting App Starts Microsoft Teams is a web application that needs a browser as a runtime environment. In order to keep things simple – at the expense of disk space – the Teams […] Read more
Windows Terminal as Standard User With Dedicated Admin Account Feature-wise, Windows Terminal is a fantastic replacement for the dated console host. It presents entirely new problems, however, in a secure setup with a standard user for day-to-day operations and […] Read more
Windows 11: How To Configure Secure DNS (DoH) for All WiFi Networks This post explains how to configure DNS over HTTPS (DoH) for all WiFi networks in Windows 11 via the Settings app. Unfortunately, this is less intuitive than it should be; […] Read more
Split-Tunnel VPN & WiFi: No Internet via IPv4 Due to Interface Priority I had a weird issue on my laptop: whenever I connected to our company’s VPN, I lost local internet connectivity. As it turned out, this was caused by incorrect network […] Read more
Controlling RGB Keyboard Lighting Without Bloated Vendor Software Vendors in the gaming space often make wonderful keyboards, but their software is not always up to par. Take the Razer Huntsman Elite: its software is a whopping 422 MB […] Read more
Free Services to Send Files End-To-End Encrypted There are a number of services for sending files to someone else that are both free and secure. This post provides an overview. Read more
ShareX: Free Screen Recording Tool & Mouse Pointer Offset Fix This is a quick post to remind me of two things: 1) ShareX is the tool of choice for screen recordings on Windows. 2) On high-DPI (4K) screens there is […] Read more
Changing the Location of Total Commander Configuration Files Depending on how you installed Total Commander, the default settings location may resolve to the installation directory or the user profile. This article explains how to locate the configuration files […] Read more
Finding (Executables in) User-Writeable Directories This article presents two different detection types for insecure filesystem permissions on Windows endpoints: scanning for directories that are user-writable, and detecting processes that are started from user-writeable directories. Read more
Checking Windows Hello Key Storage: TPM or Software? Windows Hello for Business (WHfB) stores a cryptographic key on the device. The preferred storage location is a hardware TPM module. However, if a TPM is not available, the key […] Read more
How to Check the TPM Status & Enable the CPU’s fTPM/PTT The recent Windows 11 announcement has created a lot of confusion due to the requirement for a trusted platform module (TPM). This article explains why your machine almost certainly has […] Read more
Top 10 IT Security Tips for Individual Users This is a list of simple things that will protect you from nearly all the real-world IT security issues affecting individuals and SOHO users. Read more
Royalty-Free Images for Blogs, Websites & Social Media Social media posts are so much more memorable if they feature a picture. To make your blog articles look great on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., you, therefore, need to include […] Read more
Splunk Search Results: JSON to HTML Table Conversion in PowerShell Splunk search results can be exported from the UI as CSV, JSON, and XML, but not as HTML. This article presents a PowerShell script that converts exported search results from […] Read more
Adobe Acrobat & Photoshop: Network Connection Target Hosts This post lists the internet communication targets of Adobe Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, and Creative Cloud. This post is a part of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of […] Read more
Citrix CVAD: Network Connection Target Hosts This post lists the internet communication targets of Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (formerly XenApp/XenDesktop). This post is a part of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of […] Read more
Anatomy of WerFault.exe’s Application Crash Error Reporting Not much information is available on Windows Error Reporting’s WerFault.exe, the process that is launched by the OS whenever an application crashes. This post documents the launch sequence of WerFault.exe […] Read more
Windows OS, Services & Apps: Network Connection Target Hosts This post lists the internet communication targets of the Microsoft Windows operating system, including its various services and UWP apps. This post is a part of my application network connection […] Read more
MS Office & Teams: Network Connection Target Hosts This post lists the internet communication targets of Microsoft Office and Teams. It is a part of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of articles that explain how […] Read more
Application Network Connection Monitoring With Splunk & uberAgent This is part 1 of my application network connection monitoring series, a group of articles that explain how to analyze the network traffic of any Windows or macOS app. Read more
