Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/06/19
Many web-sites and password managers have a strength indicator built-in.
This is a really good example (with open source JavaScript code!) of one: [Wayback/Archive] zxcvbn: Low-Budget Password Strength Estimation | USENIX
Be aware though that it stores a plain text file named passwords.txt on your system (this seems to confuse some users, especially when their password is in it).
Homans password behaviour does not change much over time, so this half hour 2016 presentation on it is still current: [Wayback/Archive] USENIX Security ’16 – zxcvbn: Low-Budget Password Strength Estimation – YouTube for which you can download:
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Posted in Chrome, Development, Edge, Firefox, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Power User, Safari, Scripting, Software Development, Web Browsers, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/06/05
For non-Windows systems, I have used TeamViewer in the past and when they started being obnoxious reverted mostly to VNC derived alternatives. For Windows, I’d usually combined VPN with Remote Desktop.
Recently, I found out that during my first rectum cancer year (and for others, the first COVID-19 year), the development of RustDesk – which can be self-hosted – started as an open source project on [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – rustdesk/rustdesk: An open-source remote desktop application designed for self-hosting, as an alternative to TeamViewer. with their first commit being [Wayback/Archive] Initial commit · wabarc/wayback@650ea87 · GitHub.
I got pointed to this in [Wayback/Archive] Your Remote Desktop SUCKS!! Try this instead (FREE + Open Source) – YouTube.
One of the main things to figure out is how reliably RustDesk does firewall hole punching*.
Another personal interest is to learn more about Rust and Dart, the main programming languages in which RustDesk is written.
Here are some links:
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Posted in Development, Power User, Remote Desktop Protocol/MSTSC/Terminal Services, Rust, Screen sharing, Software Development, TeamViewer, VNC/Virtual_Network_Computing, Windows | Tagged: 594 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/02
Quite a while ago, Chrome moved from a structure based on “Current Session“, “Current Tabs“, “Last Session” and “Last Tabs” into “Session_#################” and “Tabs_#################” stored in a “Sessions” folder (and similar migrations for other state and configuration files).
The numbers in the “Session_*” and “Tabs_*” files are time stamps of those sessions, for instance one needs to figure out what the “13310808970819630” in “Session_13310808970819630” and “Session_13310808970819630” means.
Lot’s of web-pages with tips and tricks around the old structures are still around, often surfacing high in Google Search results.
I was interested in a particular trick to export Google Chrome browsing history and had a hard time figuring out the easiest solution.
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Posted in Apple, Batch-Files, Chrome, Chrome, Database Development, Development, Google, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, NirSoft, Polyglot, Power User, Scripting, SQLite, Web Browsers, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Tagged: define | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/30
More on the reason why I learned a few SQLite things soon, but for my link and documentation archive, below is what I learned.
Most commands use the database file C:\temp\History which has no extension as that is how I got the file in the first place (spoiler: it’s a Chrome browser History from one of my user profiles).
Let’s get started:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Console (command prompt window), Database Development, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Software Development, SQL, SQLite | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/10
Over the last years a few C:\Windows.msi vulnerabilities have been discovered (and fixed), of which some are linked below.
The core is that the Windows Installer tries to be transactional, and NTFS is, but the combination with installer processes isn’t.
That leads into vulnerabilities where you can insert malicious Roll Back Scripts (.rbs files) and Roll Back Files (.rbf files), and I wonder if by now more have been discovered.
So this post is a kind of reminder to myself (:
Oh, and I learned much more about whoami on Windows, as there whoami /groups shows very detailed SID information. From that, I learned more on the internals of SIDs too!
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Posted in Blue team, C++, Development, Power User, Red team, Security, Software Development, Visual Studio C++, Windows, Windows Development | Tagged: 1, else, endif, if | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/09
This is soooo cool: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – PluMGMK/vbesvga.drv: Modern Generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1
Modern Generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1
This is a rewrite of the Windows 3.1 SVGA driver, designed to support
ALL available 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit graphic modes on any system providing the
VESA BIOS Extensions (hence the
VBE in the name). It is based on the Video 7 SVGA driver included in the
Win16 Driver Development Kit, with most of the hardware-specific code gutted out, and with support added for multi-byte pixels.
Related:
It reminds me of other endevours to keep retro-software easy to use: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Assembly Language, Delphi, Delphi 1, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 3.11, x86 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/02
Steps for installing Chocolatey on Windows 11 and up or 10 version 1803 and up.
Since I often install Windows on machines where it is not easy to copy/paste longer install commands my steps are slightly different than the ones on [Wayback/Archive] Chocolatey Software | Installing Chocolatey:
- Start a regular command prompt
- Either these two (the options are equivalent, see [Wayback/Archive] curl: transfer a URL | curl Commands | Man Pages | ManKier for
--remote-name and -O):
curl --remote-name https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1curl -O https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1
Note the cURL pre-installed on Windows 10 since at least 6 years*: release 1803 or insider build 17063 is good enough to download the Chocolatey install script
- Inspect the downloaded
install.ps1 to check if you spot anything you dislike
- Start an elevated (administrator) command prompt
- Start PowerShell
- Execute this command
Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force
- Execute this command in the folder where you downloaded
install.ps1
- Yup, a custom build of cURL has been pre-installed on Windows 10 and up since more than 6 years:
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, Chocolatey, cURL, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/03/31
A few years back I had an error happen a while on one of my Windows machines after a git pull: fatal: detected dubious ownership in repository at 'C:/versioned/repository' followed by a few lines with Windows SIDs (Security Identifiers) that I had to map to actual users.
I thought I had it scheduled, but my notes were in a draft post, so when I bumped into it again when upgrading an old virtual machine with new versions I finished it and scheduled it for now.
The first time I got the error was after git for Windows fixed security vulnerability [Wayback/Archive] CVE-2022-24765 and included the quote from [Wayback/Archive] Uncontrolled search for the Git directory in Git for Windows · Advisory · git-for-windows/git:
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Posted in CommandLine, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, git, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Source Code Management, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7 | Tagged: 11 | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 