When importing a CSV into a PowerShell object, each field will be declared as a [string] which breaks sorting and makes working with the data difficult. Thankfully there is a way to declare types which will be showed below. An excerpt of the data I’m working with is as follows: To import this data into […]
While participating in a recent SANS NetWars, I needed to iterate through a range of hex values and found a quick way to achieve this via PowerShell. Creates an array from 00 to ff. Creates an array from 0000 to ffff. Creates an array from 0000 to 00ff.
A recent piece of malware used encoding techniques in a Matryoshka doll type fashion to evade detection. One of those layers consisted of Unicode strings like the following snippet: Thankfully I came across the following post on Happy SysAdm: Working with Unicode scripts, blocks and categories in Powershell This lead to the following snippet of […]
Password reuse is not a good practice. If there’s any doubt, there are great discussions about this on security.stackexchange.com. So while being vigilant to have unique passwords for each account/service, the following PowerShell scripts have been quite useful. Specific or Limited Character Set Some accounts/services require a specific set of characters. For those instances, the […]
Traditionally Group Policy (GP) has been used to configure systems within a domain however more recently Microsoft has augmented this functionality with Desired State Configuration (DSC). While each has its purpose, the following are benefits of DSC. Testing – DSC modules can be authored to perform validation checks on whether or not the desired setting […]
I was watching PowerShell Uncensored – Jaap Brasser & Jason Yoder where a number of useful tips were provided. One of the most interesting items was command logging via the PSReadLine module. Loaded by default it will log all commands typed into a PowerShell window. Even passwords that are not provided via secure prompts/methods. This […]
For those that can’t afford a costly monitoring system (SCOM) or don’t want to manage a large open source product (NAGIOS), one can leverage native OS functionality for creating alerts. In this example, there will be two parts: Part 1 – Scheduled Task In a Microsoft environment, this is the preferred method for automating reoccurring […]
I had to transfer a file between two systems running Windows where only one of them had internet connectivity. In the Linux realm one would use netcat to transfer the file. While netcat isn’t a native tool on Windows it does have PowerShell and all of .NET thus allowing one to create an HTTP listener […]
Here are two functions for compressing and decompressing files using GZip. These have been tested on Windows 10.
When administering a system, there are times when folders need to be relocated to a different location. Perhaps the current location no longer has enough space or perhaps a “Best Practices” document suggests a new location. Either way, the most difficult part of the relocation process is ensuring the NTFS permissions are properly set on […]
Security Tidbits 