Fabrice Kauffmann's Tech Blog

Introduction Updating Microsoft Windows Group Policy settings on the local machine is not so hard with a tool such as Gpupdate, but updating these policies on remote domain computers is not possible from within any Microsoft Management Console (MMC) by default or with any Microsoft tool available so far. The problem... Most administrators know the problem of forcing Group Policy (GP) processing on remote computers. After configuring an important policy of some kind, we would sometimes like GP processing to occur immediately on client computers. The problem is that by default, the so called background processing “only” happens every 90 to 120 minutes (randomized) – if we want to force updates to occur right away we are on our own. ...and the solution Why invent something that has already been invented, right? PsExec is developed by Mark Russinovich, the former owner of Sysinternals which was acquired by Microsoft in July 2006. It is currently available in ve

It is possible to detect short names of files and directories which have an 8.3 file naming scheme equivalent in Windows by using some vectors in several versions of Microsoft IIS. For instance, it is possible to detect all short-names of “.aspx” files as they have 4 letters in their extensions. Soroush Dalili and Ali Abbasnejad have written a small scanner as a proof of concept. It seems the latest versions of IIS and .Net version 4 have been secured against this attack. Moreover, some of the websites which use special URL-rewrite rules are also safe. Note that Basic authentication and Windows authentication cannot stop this attack. Please visit SecProject.com to read the details and find the PoC code: http://soroush.secproject.com/downloadable/microsoft_iis_tilde_character_vulnerability_feature.pdf

Yes, you read well, Windows Server 2003!!! And yes, sometimes, even in 2012, you have to deal with antic servers running low of disk space ;) To completely remove Outlook Express from you Windows 2003 server, follow the instructions below.  It is a great little tip to prevent that unwanted Outlook Express link from the Quick Launch Bar and Start Menu. Open ‘C:\Windows\Inf\sysoc.inf’ in notepad. Find the line ‘OEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,oeaccess.inf,hide,7′ and change it to read ‘OEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,oeaccess.inf,,7′ Save and close the file. (Remove the word ‘hide’) Open ‘Add / Remove Programs’ and then ‘Windows Components’ Uncheck ‘Outlook Express’ to uninstall. Source: Matt Parkinson