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
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 JSON into an HTML table for use with documentation, blogs, etc. Read more
Blocking Office Macros, Managing Windows & macOS via Intune How to completely block the execution Office macros on macOS and Windows. The configuration is centrally managed in Intune & extensible through PowerShell. Read more
PowerShell Script: Test Chrome, Firefox & IE Browser Performance There is more than one way to test the performance of web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, or IE, but regardless of how you do it, you need a consistent workload that makes the browsers comparable. Unless you are testing with synthetic benchmarks (which come with a plethora of problems of their own) you need a […] Read more
Disabling Azure Active Directory Password Expiration User accounts created in Azure AD are subject to Azure AD’s password policies and restrictions, whose defaults are far from optimal. Unfortunately, the most severe shortcomings cannot currently be changed. Read more
Performance Footprint of PowerShell Logon Scripts PowerShell is a popular and extremely versatile tool, but is it a good idea to use PowerShell in logon scripts? Let’s try to find out! Read more
Recursively Setting Directory Attributes in PowerShell As I found out the (excellent) Egnyte Desktop Sync client for Windows ignores directories that have the system attribute set. For some reason some of the directories I wanted to sync did have this attribute set. Getting rid of the system attribute on (many) directories is harder than it seems. Read more
Manual Folder Redirection with Symbolic Links This is a guest post by Bryan Chriscoli, who implemented an innovative alternative to folder redirection with the help of symbolic links, AppSense products and PowerShell scripting. All credit goes to him. Motivation Whilst I was still working for AppSense as a Solutions Architect assigned to implement Environment Manager at UnitedHealth Group, it became apparent […] Read more
Creating Realistic Test User Accounts in Active Directory When you need to simulate a real Active Directory with thousands of users you quickly find that creating realistic test accounts is not trivial. Sure enough, you can whip up a quick PowerShell one-liner that creates any number of accounts, but what if you need real first and last names? Real (existing) addresses? Postal codes […] Read more
Vendors: Why We Do Not Need Your PowerShell SDKs My recent post about things I dislike about PowerShell provoked some interesting reactions (see the comments). Several readers argued that PowerShell is not supposed to be a full-blown programming language but a kind of super-advanced shell scripting tool. Read more
What I Hate About PowerShell With all the love PowerShell is getting these days one might think that the golden age of (Windows) scripting has finally begun. Maybe it has. But one man’s nirvana can be another man’s hell. Read more
Configuring Citrix ShareFile Sync from PowerShell When you have a cloud-based file sharing service it makes a lot of sense to synchronize part or all of the data with your desktop computer. Citrix ShareFile offers the Sync for Windows tool for that purpose. However, once you open its configuration screen you notice that has a severe restriction: it can only synchronize […] Read more
Shutting Down Unused Persistent XenDesktop VMs When you use XenDesktop the only way it makes sense you may find that Citrix has not really put much effort into making that a smooth experience. Read more
Script: Gracefully Shut Down all VMs on a Given Set of Hosts (VMware/XenDesktop) Cleanly shutting down all virtual machines on a given set of hosts is not as trivial as it might seem – especially if you want to be able to restore the original state once the planned maintenance you are doing this for is completed. Read more
Script: Add all Virtual Machines in the Data Store to the Inventory (VMware) There are situations when you have VMs on disk, but vCenter does not know about them – i.e. they are not in the inventory. While it is fairly easy to add a single machine to the inventory, doing so for dozens or hundreds or VMs is too tedious to do manually. This script automates the […] Read more
What’s Missing in PowerShell 3 ISE On my quest for a decent PowerShell development tool I first tried out PowerGUI, but was not very happy with it. When the RTM version of PowerShell 3.0 along with a revamped ISE was released a few days ago, I decided to give it a try. Here is what I found. Editor Tab size is […] Read more
PowerShell Script Switches Printer Configurations Between Sites Attending the community conference PubForum E2E Conference has many benefits, the biggest is in my opinion getting to know many very talented and very nice people. One of them, Ton de Vreede, recently sent me a PowerShell script he had written which I am happy to publish here. Read more
New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Office 2010, RDS/XenApp, Windows, Web As before this is mainly a condensed and beautified version of my twitter postings. You can get them unfiltered and without delay by following me. Read more
New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Windows (7 and 2008 R2), PowerShell and Citrix Windows General Good info for troubleshooting DFS-Namespaces in the MS KB: Storage locations, inconsistencies and how to deal with them. Complex passwords and security guidelines for end users? No, thank you, says MS researcher. I agree. Read more
Syntax Highlighting PowerShell Code in HTML – With a PowerShell Script When you are publishing PowerShell code on the web, you soon discover that it looks much nicer with syntax highlighting – as did I. There are several ways to add syntax highlighting to your blog or web site, most of which rely on external (WordPress) plugins or JavaScript on the page. I do not like […] Read more
PowerShell Script Lists App-V Package Dependencies (Dynamic Suite Composition, DSC) Update 2010-04-20: Thanks to Stefan Henseler the script now works correctly with multiple dependencies in a single file. Be sure to download the current version below. App-V’s Dynamic Suite Composition is a powerful feature in that it allows multiple “bubbles” to share the same virtual environment. In other words, package A can be made dependent […] Read more
New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Windows, Hyper-V, Citrix, PowerShell and Application Streaming / App-V Windows Beginning with Vista, when formatting a drive the entire disk is overwritten with zeroes. While this is good for end users who like to wipe all data prior to selling or throwing away a disk drive, SAN-based volumes should not be formatted like this. Perform a quick format instead. But if you want to […] Read more
How to Determine the Windows Installation Date with and without PowerShell There are many ways to determine when Windows was installed. Here are some of them. Read more
New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Bugs, Annoyances, PowerShell and some other Stuff Bugs and Annoyances ICA connections initiated over the ICA client object (ICO) SDK fail because 128-bit encryption cannot be enabled. Apparently, setting EncryptionLevelSession does not work. Annoyingly, this bug is more than a year old, was fixed in the ICA client 10.2 and reappeared in the current version 11.0. Bugs like this one are bad […] Read more
Useful PowerShell Scriptlets for Files and Folders What is the best way to learn PowerShell? Never use cmd.exe again! With PowerShell 2.0 on my Windows 7 machine I decided it finally is time to polish my rusty knowledge of the language dating back to the days when PowerShell was still called Monad. In my attempt to re-familiarize myself with PoSh I consciously […] Read more
New Web Content Actually Worth Reading (August 2009) Why does Windows 7 feel faster than Vista, although really it is not? Improvements to the graphics driver model (WDDM got upgraded to version 1.1) certainly add to this feeling and reduce the memory footprint of the desktop windows manager (DWM) process. Microsoft describes the changes in its Graphics Guide for Windows 7. Read more
