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

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Archive for the ‘Software Development’ Category

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Cryptosense Discovery

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/15

This is cool: [Wayback] Cryptosense Discovery:

Free tool that discovers security configuration errors in SSH and TLS servers and explains how to fix them. Supports STARTTLS and can also scan HTTPS, POP3, IMAP and SMTP servers.

It gives you a list of servers a target domain uses (for purposes like web, email, etc) that can have external encryption enabled, then allows you to test these.

The list by default has only servers within that target domain enabled, but you can optionally include other servers (for instance if a domain uses a third party for their SMTP handling).

Basically it is the web-counterpart of a tool like testssl.sh (which I have written about before).

Found while checking out how to test the MX security of a domain using [Wayback] testssl.sh as I forgot the syntax, which in retrospect is dead easy as per [Wayback] tls – How to use testssl.sh on an SMTP server? – Information Security Stack Exchange (thanks [Wayback] Z.T.!):

…

testssl.sh --mx <domain name>

works fine.

testssl.sh -t smtp <ip>:25

and

testssl.sh -t smtp <ip>:587

also work fine.

Note that not specifying the port assumes port 443, despite specifying protocol smtp. That doesn’t work.

…

Also, you might try discovery.cryptosense.com which does the same thing only better

That website is made by the cool people at [Wayback] Cryptosense.

Both are a lot easier than the alternatives described in [Wayback] Blog · How to test SMTP servers using the command-line · Halon MTA: using nslookup and dig for determining the affected hosts, using nc or telnet for testing basic connectivity, using [Wayback/Archive.is] openssl s_client to test TLS, and [Wayback/Archive.is] smtpping for measuring throughput.

In addition to the above tools mentioned in the blog, I’ve also used sendEmail (note case sensitivity), ehlo-size, and swaks.

This is what I tested:

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Awk, bash, bash, Communications Development, Development, DNS, Encryption, grep, HTTPS/TLS security, Internet, Internet protocol suite, Power User, Scripting, Security, SMTP, Software Development, SSH, ssh/sshd, TCP, testssl.sh, TLS | Leave a Comment »

The things I didn’t notice during cancer survival: ftfy 6.0 and more versions got released during my recovery (including the poem “Ode to a Shipping Label”)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/10

When writing this, [Wayback/Archive.is] ftfy · PyPI:history indicates ftfy was already at 6.0.3.

It is still my goto tool for figuring out the cause of Mojibake. I remember writing about it the first time in 2016 (see the ftfy category) when it was already at version 3.0, discovering it after a few Mojibake posts.

By now it even understands right-to-left Mojibake garbage: [Archive.is] Elia Robyn Speer on Twitter: “ftfy 5.8 is out! … A user reported that Hebrew text wasn’t being fixed, and this made me think about how to expand some of the trickier cases to non-Latin alphabets.”

Mojibake mishaps still happen a lot, so by now I hope I will have done a Mojibake themed Delphi talk at one or more conferences.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in !!con (bangbangcon), About, Autistic Spectrum/Autism, Cancer, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Encoding, Event, ftfy, Mojibake, Personal, Python, Rectum cancer, Scripting, Software Development, Unicode | Leave a Comment »

PowerShell debugging in Visual Studio Code: “PowerShell: Launch Current File w/Args” configuration template is missing

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/09

Not sure why, but most of my Visual Studio configurations have the “PowerShell: Launch Current File w/Args” debug configuration template. So here is the JSON you need to add in your launch.json configuration file.

        {
            "type": "PowerShell",
            "request": "launch",
            "name": "PowerShell Launch Current File w/Args Prompt",
            "script": "${file}",
            "args": [
                "${command:SpecifyScriptArgs}"
            ],
            "cwd": "${file}"
        }

The trick is the bold part that prompts Visual Studio for the arguments.

Note: in order to have such a file, you need to have opened a folder in Visual Studio Code first, then open a PowerShell script file from that directory second.

Related:

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

How do I drop a bash shell from within Python? – Stack Overflow

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/09

I needed this for my blog post tomorrow:

import os
os.system('sh') # or bash, tcsh, zsh, whatever. :-P

[Wayback] How do I drop a bash shell from within Python? – Stack Overflow

Thanks [Wayback] Chris Jester-Young!

This trick works at the Python shell.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

The Delphi documentation site docwiki.embarcadero.com has been down/up oscillating for 4 days is now down for almost a day.

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/08

The [Wayback/Archive] Embarcadero/IDERA Documentation Wiki has been mostly down since March 3rd, 2022 (not the main page, but almost all other pages are).

I modified [Wayback/Archive] Docwiki https – EmbarcaderoMonitoring to show the actual status of a deeper page as the (mostly static) top page is up, so monitoring that is useless as the deeper pages are down.

The deeper pages are dynamic and require a functioning MySQL database connection. That connection is mostly down (the error message is not clear, so this could be a network or a database server problem, or maybe even a loadbalancer gradually entering bit heaven).

Since it had been down for like 6 days in February*, I’d expect Idera to keep an eye on it and prepare for more downtime. Apparently that’s either not a 24×7 thing for them or  they missed the “pre” in preparation as it is dead-silent on .

It also runs on an unsupported version of Mediawiki 1.31** which by itself does not explain the outage, but does indicate that their idea of handling their internal lifetime management is different than what they advocate to clients in their software subscription model, see [Wayback/Archive] Delphi – Embarcadero store, [Wayback/Archive] Update Subscription – Embarcadero and [Wayback/Archive] Special Offers on RAD Studio, Delphi & C++Builder – Embarcadero:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Bookmarklet, Delphi, Development, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Lightweight markup language, MediaWiki, Monitoring, Power User, Scripting, SocialMedia, Software Development, Twitter, Uptimerobot, Web Browsers | Leave a Comment »

Some insights on how readlink approached canonicalisation of a filename having symlinks

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/03

Cool, I didn’t realise how readlink operated, but found out a bit more in the answers to [Wayback] symlink – How to get full path of original file of a soft symbolic link? – Unix & Linux Stack Exchange, thanks to [Wayback] daisy, [Wayback] Peter.O and [Wayback] Gilles ‘SO- stop being evil’:

  • Try this line: 
    readlink -f `which command`

    If command is in your $PATH variable , otherwise you need to specify the path you know.

    -f will return a path to a non-existent final target, so long as the intermediate link targets exist… Use -e to avoid this, ie. -e will return null if the final target does not exist. – Peter.O

  • Under Linux, readlink reads the contents of a symlink, and readlink -f follows symlinks to symlinks to symlinks, etc., until it finds something that isn’t a symlink.

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, bash, bash, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

Git Explorer: a cool tool to visually learn git commands

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/03

This is sooooo cool: [Wayback] Git Explorer

GitExplorer: Find the right git commands you need without digging through the web

What I like is the simple clean UI with a two step selection of what git functionality you want to use followed by a simple usage and explanation.

Very well suites for both referencing and interactive learning.

Bonus: it is open source at [Wayback/Archive.is] summitech/gitexplorer: Find the right git commands without digging through the web..

Via: [Archive.is] Marko ⚡ Denic on Twitter: “You can find the right git commands without digging through the web. “

–jeroen

Posted in Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, git, GitHub, Software Development, Versioning | Leave a Comment »

Windows applications: storing your data in the correct place (Roaming, Local, LocalLow, not Documents)

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/02

This is a follow on the below TomTom HOME complaint: Know where your application should store its data.

I know this can be tough, especially for applications that were developed before Windows Vista came around: that’s when CSIDL were introduced. But still: Windows XP already had %APPDATA% (the environment variable equivalent to CSIDL_APPDATA, it pointed to %USERPROFILE%\\Application Data)

Applications should store data under either of below locations. Values are KNOWNFOLDERID constants with CSIDL constants in parenthesis where available. Some have .NET equivalents in the System.Environment.SpecialFolder enumeration:

  • FOLDERID_LocalAppData (CSIDL_LOCAL_APPDATA)

    The file system directory that serves as a data repository for local (nonroaming) applications.

  • FOLDERID_LocalAppDataLow (n/a)

    The file system directory that serves as a data repository for local (nonroaming) applications that run under “low integrity” (like in a web browser).

  • FOLDERID_RoamingAppData (CSIDL_APPDATA)

     The file system directory that serves as a common repository for application-specific data.

Do not use FOLDERID_Documents (CSIDL_MYDOCUMENTS) as this is specific to user documents, not application data.

The virtual folder that represents the My Documents desktop item. This value is equivalent to CSIDL_PERSONAL.

Basically use FOLDERID_LocalAppData for data that is machine specific and FOLDERID_RoamingAppData for data that should travel to other machines when the user logs on to them.

Be very careful how much you store as potentially roamed data as these can go over slow networks (both low bandwidth and low latency).

Documentation

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, Development, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

Too bad: ESXi busybox has `diff`, but not `patch`

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/03/02

On my ESXi boxes, I have a directory with local scripts that in part depend on the machine.

So I contemplated patching the dending parts with patch.

Then I found out that the BusyBox that VMware built for ESXi does have diff, but not patch:

# $(readlink -f "`which diff`")
BusyBox v1.29.3 (2021-01-17 01:25:00 PST) multi-call binary.
BusyBox is copyrighted by many authors between 1998-2015.
Licensed under GPLv2. See source distribution for detailed
copyright notices.

Usage: busybox [function [arguments]...]
   or: busybox --list
   or: function [arguments]...

    BusyBox is a multi-call binary that combines many common Unix
    utilities into a single executable.  Most people will create a
    link to busybox for each function they wish to use and BusyBox
    will act like whatever it was invoked as.

Currently defined functions:
    addgroup, adduser, arch, ash, awk, basename, bunzip2, bzcat, bzip2, cat, chgrp, chmod, chown, chvt, cksum, clear, cp, crond,
    cut, date, dd, delgroup, deluser, diff, dirname, dnsdomainname, du, echo, egrep, eject, env, expr, false, fdisk, fgrep, find,
    fstrim, getty, grep, groups, gunzip, gzip, halt, head, hexdump, hostname, inetd, init, kill, ln, logger, login, ls, lzop,
    lzopcat, md5sum, mkdir, mkfifo, mknod, mktemp, more, mv, nohup, nslookup, od, passwd, poweroff, printf, readlink, reboot,
    reset, resize, rm, rmdir, sed, seq, setsid, sh, sha1sum, sha256sum, sha3sum, sha512sum, sleep, sort, ssl_client, stat, stty,
    sum, sync, tail, tar, taskset, tee, test, time, timeout, touch, true, uname, uniq, unlink, unlzop, unzip, usleep, vi, watch,
    wc, wget, which, who, xargs, zcat

This list is much shorter than the applets that are supported in [Wayback] BusyBox – The Swiss Army Knife of Embedded Linux, so VMware did cut out quite a few.

Generating the above output

The command-line trick above first expands diff using the output of which diff, then finds out where it links to through the readlink -f wrapper there the back-quotes “`” get this output:

# readlink -f "`which diff`"
/usr/lib/vmware/busybox/bin/busybox

Finally the $(...) executes the output of readlink.

It is based on [Wayback] bash – How to resolve symbolic links in a shell script – Stack Overflow

readlink -f "$path"

Editor’s note: The above works with GNU readlink and FreeBSD/PC-BSD/OpenBSD readlink, but not on OS X as of 10.11.GNU readlink offers additional, related options…

Need to devise a way to apply patches

Given there is no patch, I need to think about a good way to apply patches, for instance to snip this into /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh in a reliable way:

## BEGIN-PATCH-PATH

# local binaries are in /vmfs/volumes/NVMe980PRO_1TB/local-bin/
# link that directory from /opt/bin
# then add /opt/bin to the PATH in /etc/profile so that on each logon it becomes available
# this means you need to logon twice after reboot:
# - first to patch /etc/profile
# - second to have the correct PATH loaded from /etc/profile
# direcory exist trick from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59838/how-can-i-check-if-a-directory-exists-in-a-bash-shell-script

patch_etc_profile_PATH() {
    if [ -d "$1" ]; then
      ln -s "$1" "/opt/bin"
      sed -i -e 's!PATH=/bin:/sbin!PATH=/bin:/sbin:/opt/bin/!' /etc/profile
    fi
}

patch_etc_profile_PATH /vmfs/volumes/NVMe980PRO_1TB/local-bin/

## END-PATCH-PATH

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, ash/dash, ash/dash development, BusyBox, Development, ESXi6, ESXi6.5, ESXi6.7, ESXi7, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi | 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 »

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