IT & Tech

Yesterday Microsoft announced a new critical vulnerability CVE-2023-23397, a vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook that allows a threat actor to harvest NTLMv2 hashes via a specifically crafted Outlook appointment. Microsoft state that attackers can exploit this vulnerability by sending an email that triggers automatically when it is retrieved and processed by the Outlook client. This can lead to exploitation BEFORE the email is viewed in the Preview Pane. They also state that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild....

Do you relate to the cover photo? Have your NTFS permissions just bombed out and you can’t bare the idea of waiting hours or days for your new permissions to apply? Don’t worry, I’m here to help. It’s no secret that applying NTFS permissions to any directory tree larger than a few thousand files quickly decends in to a painstaking waiting game. The built in UI is garbage, and icacls is decent but single-threaded and slow....

Authentication Authentication is saying “I am me”. It validates who you are. When you go to a club and the bouncer stops you and you tell him you’re on the guest list, you then show him your ID and he says “Ahh! You’re that guy, come on in” - that’s Authentication Authorisation Authorisation validates what you claim to be. Going back to the club and the bouncer stops you. You show him your ID....

Submodules aren’t removed using git rm submodule-dir, they need to be removed in a far more thorough and annoying fashion. There are a number of unclear explanations at various sources so I decided to write my own findings. Delete the relevant parts from the .gitmodules file. EG: 1 2 3 [submodule "blog/themes/PaperMod"] path = blog/themes/PaperMod url = https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod.git Stage .gitmodules via git add .gitmodules Remove the relevant parts from .git/config...

Introduction I recently came to the conclusion that I wasn’t posting on my blog nearly as much as I’d like to. My blog runs on WordPress, and I’ve felt for a while that the process of logging in, creating a post, fixing formatting in a WSYWGI editor and eventually posting was too much resistance when I commonly just write notes in plain text. So, why not just write posts in plain text and have something else do the work of turning that in to a post or a blog?...

The Problem You’ve set up Azure AD Connect or Azure AD Connect Cloud Sync, but some users haven’t sync’d correctly. Trying to force a new sync / Soft Link based on SMTP or UPN matching doesn’t work. These sync’d users may have created new Azure AD accounts, or may have failed to create an Azure AD account altogether. Your internal users UPN matches a domain configured in Azure AD. The Cause The initial soft link matches on UPN or SMTP, but may fail if there are conflicting ProxyAddresses....

The Problem You’re unable to activate a copy of Windows Server 2019 or 2022 Evaluation edition with your VLSC MAK key The Cause Windows Server 2019 / 2022 Evaluation edition can only be activated with a retail key. This must happen before a Volume Licence Key can be used. The Fix We need to use DISM to change the product version/edition Open an elevated command prompt Get a list of available version upgrade paths by typing:...

The Problem Veeam is failing to back up one of your Hyper-V VM’s and is throwing the error: VHDx:CVhdxDisk.InitialValidation: Invalid bitmap block (all bitmap block of fixed and dynamic disks must be in SB_BLOCK_NOT_PRESENT state) Agent failed to process method {VHDx.GetDiskInformation} The Cause The error is telling us that Veeam’s VHDx InitialValidation function failed as the VHDx had blocks in an invalid state. According to Microsoft’s OpenSpecs Documentation for VHDx, the only valid Sector Bitmap Block state for fixed and dynamic disks is SB_BLOCK_NOT_PRESENT...

Introduction ITIL defines an incident as “an unplanned interruption to or quality reduction of an IT service”. In order to minimise disruption caused by an incident and restore normal service as quickly as possible, it’s vital to have an efficient incident management process. Unfortunately, this is something a lot of IT teams get wrong. Unmanaged Incidents It’s 1 PM and your team has just started receiving calls from one of your users that the network drives are down....

Check Task Manager The first, simplest option to check is to open task manager. Click the performance tab Check if Virtualisation is Enabled If Virtualisation is not Enabled, this could be due to it being disabled in the BIOS. Before enabling it, check if your processor is compatible. Check Processor Compatibility Identify your Processor Press the Windows Key Type “System Information” in the search box Make a note of your processor make and model Check Product Specs - Intel: If your processor is Intel, go to the Intel Product Specification Page and look up your processor model and open the specification page....