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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘TCP’ Category

Not sure why: graph.windows.net is missing a security certificate retraction on some Windows machines?

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/02/28

Got this on two Dutch Windows machines, not sure why yet:

Missing information on security certificate retraction

Missing information on security certificate retraction

Certificate path is OK

Certificate path is OK

–jeroen

Posted in Communications Development, Development, Encryption, Internet protocol suite, Power User, Security, TCP, TLS | Leave a Comment »

Bash functions to encode and decode the ‘Basic’ HTTP Authentication Scheme

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/02/24

IoT devices still often use the ‘Basic’ HTTP Authentication Scheme for authorisation, see [Wayback] RFC7617: The ‘Basic’ HTTP Authentication Scheme (RFC ) and [Wayback] RFC2617: HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication (RFC ).

Often this authentication is used even over http instead of over https, for instance the Egardia/Woonveilig alarm devices I wrote about yesterday at  Egardia/Woonveilig: some notes about logging on a local gateway to see more detailed information on the security system. This is contrary to guidance in:

  • RFC7617:
       This scheme is not considered to be a secure method of user
       authentication unless used in conjunction with some external secure
       system such as TLS (Transport Layer Security, [RFC5246]), as the
       user-id and password are passed over the network as cleartext.
  • RFC2617:
       "HTTP/1.0", includes the specification for a Basic Access
       Authentication scheme. This scheme is not considered to be a secure
       method of user authentication (unless used in conjunction with some
       external secure system such as SSL [5]), as the user name and
       password are passed over the network as cleartext.

Fiddling with those alarm devices, I wrote these two little bash functions (with a few notes) that work both on MacOS and in Linux:

# `base64 --decode` is platform neutral (as MacOS uses `-D` and Linux uses `-d`)
# `$1` is the encoded username:password
function decode_http_Basic_Authorization(){
  echo $1 | base64 --decode
  echo
}

# `base64` without parameters encodes
# `echo -n` does not output a new-line
# `$1` is the username; `$2` is the password
function encode_http_Basic_Authorization(){
  echo $1:$2 | base64
}

The first decodes the <credentials> from a Authorization: Basic <credentials> header into a username:password clean text followed by a newline.

The second one encodes a pair of username and password parameters into such a <credentials> string.

They are based on these initial posts that were not cross platform or explanatory:

  1. [Wayback] Decode HTTP Basic Access Authentication – Stack Pointer
  2. [Wayback] Create Authorization Basic Header | MJ’s Web Log

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Apple, Authentication, bash, bash, Communications Development, Development, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, Linux, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Power User, Scripting, Security, Software Development, TCP, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Some links on Chrome not prompting to save passwords (when Firefox and Safari do)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/01/20

For quite some time now, Chrome (think years) refuses to prompt for saving passwords whereas Firefox and Safari do prompt and save them, even for site types that it used to save passwords for in the past.

It has been annoying enough for too long now that I tried to do better than the Google searches I used back when I saw this happen first.

Below are some links based on new searches (starting with [Wayback] adding a password in chrome settings – Google Search); hopefully I can try them after I made a list of sites that Chrome does not show the password save prompt for.

Solutions I tried that failed (but maybe useful for others):

Solutions still to try:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Chrome, Chrome, Communications Development, Development, Encryption, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, Firefox, Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Fritz!WLAN, Google, https, HTTPS/TLS security, Internet, Internet protocol suite, Let's Encrypt (letsencrypt/certbot), Power User, routers, Safari, Security, TCP, TLS, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Web Browsers, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Which SMTP Port Should I Use? Learn Ports 25, 465, & 587 (and unofficial port 2525) | Mailgun

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/11/30

When trying to deliver mail, it is important to know which protocols and ports you can use.

On smtp, smtp-submission, smtps (ports 25, 587 and 465) and unofficial port 2525 (which Maingun maps to `smtp-submission): [Wayback] Which SMTP Port Should I Use? Learn Ports 25, 465, & 587 | Mailgun

Quote on why smtps port 465 is hardly used:

Port 465:

IANA has reassigned a new service to this port, and it should no longer be used for SMTP communications.

However, because it was once recognized by IANA as valid, there may be legacy systems that are only capable of using this connection method. Typically, you will use this port only if your application demands it. A quick Google search, and you’ll find many consumer Inbox Service Providers’ (ISPs) articles that suggest port 465 as the recommended setup. However, we do not recommend it, as it is not RFC compliant.

–jeroen

Posted in Communications Development, Development, Internet protocol suite, SMTP, Software Development, TLS, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

GitHub – TimeToogo/tunshell: Remote shell into ephemeral environments 🐚 🦀

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/11/25

Cool: [Wayback/Archive.is] GitHub – TimeToogo/tunshell: Remote shell into ephemeral environments 🐚 🦀

Via: [Archive.is] Jan Schaumann on Twitter: “This looks neat: on-demand remote shell into ephemeral environments, e.g. CI/CD pipeline container. Both sides fetch a client, use rendezvous server to negotiate session info, then establish connection or fall back to proxy through rendezvous. “

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Posted in Communications Development, Development, DevOps, HTTP, Infrastructure, Internet protocol suite, Power User, Software Development, TCP, WebSockets | Leave a Comment »

Random User Generator | Home

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/11/23

Cool tool for when you ever need random users to test a system [Wayback] Random User Generator | Home:

Random user generator is a FREE API for generating placeholder user information. Get profile photos, names, and more. It’s like Lorem Ipsum, for people.

This was used when extracting Parler data to substantiate evidence around the 20210106 USA Capitol riots.

You can even use a simple HTTP GET like [Wayback] randomuser.me/api and get a JSON result like this.

{"results":[{"gender":"female","name":{"title":"Miss","first":"Malou","last":"Mortensen"},"location":{"street":{"number":2669,"name":"Lyngbyvej"},"city":"Sundby","state":"Syddanmark","country":"Denmark","postcode":48047,"coordinates":{"latitude":"-35.1307","longitude":"113.7480"},"timezone":{"offset":"+1:00","description":"Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris"}},"email":"malou.mortensen@example.com","login":{"uuid":"981747de-66fe-40b0-87ea-adfe403fe1be","username":"purpleostrich871","password":"sweets","salt":"x86aQbIB","md5":"55497ac53530b428f98b9d36267ceeef","sha1":"358b94ffabe7d827c34da15791e5d6717c594428","sha256":"6e357e887877e29b7e6d53073f648174382c53c24f83479e25fed9c82075ed32"},"dob":{"date":"1995-06-05T04:50:35.145Z","age":26},"registered":{"date":"2018-07-21T00:59:50.523Z","age":3},"phone":"02990797","cell":"94800012","id":{"name":"CPR","value":"050695-9954"},"picture":{"large":"https://randomuser.me/api/portraits/women/27.jpg","medium":"https://randomuser.me/api/portraits/med/women/27.jpg","thumbnail":"https://randomuser.me/api/portraits/thumb/women/27.jpg"},"nat":"DK"}],"info":{"seed":"8971869bb62b73d7","results":1,"page":1,"version":"1.3"}}

Via:

–jeroen

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Posted in Communications Development, Development, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, JavaScript/ECMAScript, JSON, Python, REST, Scripting, Software Development, TCP | Leave a Comment »

Windows: unblocking SMB/NetBIOS/CIFS/File-and-Printer-sharing traffic from other subnets

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/29

If you enable File and Printer sharing on Windows, by default the firewall only enables it on private networks for the local subnet as remote address (for domain networks, it allows “Any”) as seen on the picture below.

When your network consists of multiple subnets, for instance when it is large, or multiple sites are connected via site-to-site VPN (often called LAN-to-LAN VPN) solutions, then these subnets cannot access each others files or printers.

Realising these default blocks, they are easy to resolve as explained in for instance [WayBack] Windows firewall blocking network shares through VPN server – Server Fault by [WayBack] Brian:

I realize this is almost three years late, but I just spent today fighting with the same problem. I did get it working, so I figured I’d share. Note that I’m using a Windows 7 PC as the file server; other versions might need slightly different configuration.

In the “Windows Firewall with Advance Security”, there are several “File and Printer Sharing” rules:

  • File and Printer Sharing (NB-Datagram-In)
  • File and Printer Sharing (NB-Name-In)
  • File and Printer Sharing (NB-Session-In)
  • File and Printer Sharing (SMB-In)

(There are additional rules, but I didn’t care about printer sharing. The same changes would apply if you want those.)

File and Printer Sharing appears to default to “Local subnet” only. You’ll need to add the subnet of your VPN clients.

Modify each of those rules as follows:

  1. Open the Properties dialog for the rule.
  2. Navigate to the Scope tab.
  3. In the Remote IP address section, the “These IP addresses” radio button should be selected.
  4. Click “Add…” next to the list of addresses. By default, only “Local subnet” is in the list.
  5. In the “This IP address or subnet:” field, enter the subnet assigned to your VPN clients (this is probably 192.168.1.0/24 in the OP, but if not, it’s the subnet assigned to the VPN adapter on the client side), then click OK.
  6. If you’re also using IPv6, add the VPN client IPv6 subnet as well.

That was enough for me to access file shares over the VPN.

(If you want to do it manually, you need to open TCP ports 139 and 445, and UDP ports 137 and 138, in the file server’s firewall.)

Hopefully I will find some time in the future to automate this using PowerShell, as netsh names are localised do hard to make universal.

These links might help me with that:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Communications Development, Development, Internet protocol suite, Power User, SMB, TCP, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Filippo Valsorda on Twitter: “whoami.filippo.io , the SSH server that knows who you are … Try it out! $ ssh http://whoami.filippo.io”

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/20

[Archive.is] Filippo Valsorda on Twitter: “whoami.filippo.io , the SSH server that knows who you are, got some newly refreshed intel! Try it out! $ ssh whoami.filippo.io

The server itself has some HTML with information too whoami.filippo.io redirecting to [WayBack] ssh whoami.filippo.io (source code is at [WayBack] GitHub – FiloSottile/whoami.filippo.io: A ssh server that knows who you are. $ ssh whoami.filippo.io).

It’s a cool open source server written in Golang, that gets all your public ssh keys (ssh automatically transmits those) and tries to map them back to a GitHub account.

In addition it shows you some potential vulnerabilities of your ssh client.

Note that in October 2020, it was temporarily down, but it will be up again: [Archive.is] Filippo Valsorda 💉💉 on Twitter: “Yeah I’m planning to but I can’t give you an ETA I’m afraid. A few weeks, maybe?… “

Thread comments

Some interesting comments in the thread:

Related: [WayBack] Auditing GitHub users’ SSH key quality

Stop presenting public keys

[WayBack] GitHub – FiloSottile/whoami.filippo.io: A ssh server that knows who you are. $ ssh whoami.filippo.io: How do I stop passing public keys

How do I stop it?

If this behavior is problematic for you, you can tell ssh not to present your public keys to the server by default.

Add these lines at the end of your ~/.ssh/config (after other “Host” directives)

Host *
    PubkeyAuthentication no
    IdentitiesOnly yes

And then specify what keys should be used for each host

Host example.com
    PubkeyAuthentication yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
    # IdentitiesOnly yes # Enable ssh-agent (PKCS11 etc.) keys

If you want you can use different keys so that they can’t be linked together

Host github.com
    PubkeyAuthentication yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/github_id_rsa

–jeroen

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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Communications Development, Development, Go (golang), Internet protocol suite, Power User, Software Development, SSH, ssh/sshd, TCP | Leave a Comment »

The browser wars that started on iOS (forcing Safari) and Android (forcing Chrome) now are continued on Windows 11 (forcing Edge)

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/05

Via:

 

Posted in Awareness, Development, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, Software Development, TCP, TLS, URI, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Solved: ‘Answering Yes to “You have an older version of PackageManagement known to cause issues with the PowerShell extension. Would you like to update PackageManagement (You will need to restart the PowerShell extension after)?” hung my Visual Studio Code.…’

Posted by jpluimers on 2021/10/04

From a while back: [Archive.is] Jeroen Wiert Pluimers on Twitter: ‘Answering Yes to “You have an older version of PackageManagement known to cause issues with the PowerShell extension. Would you like to update PackageManagement (You will need to restart the PowerShell extension after)?” hung my Visual Studio Code.… ‘

After clicking “Yes”, the the only thing visible was this notification that had an ever running “progress bar”:

Notifications - Powershell - Source: Powershell (Extension)

Notifications – Powershell – Source: Powershell (Extension)

The first part of the solution was relatively simple: restart Visual Studio code, then the original notification showed, and after clicking “Yes”, the “Panel” (you can toggle it with Ctrl+J) showed the “Terminal” output (yes, I was working on [Wayback/Archive.is] PowerShell script for sending Wake-on-LAN magic packets to given machine hardware MAC address, more about that later):

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Posted in .NET, Communications Development, Development, Encryption, HTTP, HTTPS/TLS security, Internet protocol suite, Power User, Security, Software Development, TCP, Visual Studio and tools, vscode Visual Studio Code, Windows, Windows 10 | Leave a Comment »