binaryfactory.ca

To get facetime working on your firewall you need to be sure some ports can be used. For most home users this won’t be a problem but it may be different at work. Here is the Apple KB Article on it :

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4245

If the Wi-Fi network router that you are connected to uses a firewall or security software to restrict Internet access, contact the network administrator and reference this technical article. To use FaceTime on a restricted Wi-Fi network, port forwarding must be enabled for ports 443 (TCP), 3478–3497 (UDP), 16384–16386 (UDP), and 16393–16402 (UDP).

Make sure those UDP port ranges have a good priority in your QoS configuration and you should be good to go. It is worth noting that DNS and HTTP must be open to the outside as well, but they are probably used only to establish the call (same for HTTPS/443) so the QoS config should not matter.

Depending on how you use Active Directory in your organization, you may be setting a lot of security policies on workstations, and some of these settings can be problematic during the automated build of computers.

A few workarounds exist to avoid applying those to the workstations being imaged:

* Create a temporary OU for the computer account, and move it to the proper location once the build is done
* Change the order of the steps in your build to avoid issues caused by security settings
* Configure a GPO to override the settings that need to be set only during deployment, and filter that only to machines being used.

For multiple different reasons, I had to use the last option. It is a rather clean option, as it doesn’t involve moving computer accounts after the build or any chances on the domain during the imaging process, other than joining the machine, which is great.

One word of notice: Make sure whatever you are overriding is not a must for security and is simply an “annoyance”, because eventually (within a few minutes probably), a user WILL figure out how you’re doing the filtering and WILL apply it to his own machine, in order to bypass some security settings.

Only a few steps are involved :

1) Create a GPO that will set the values to what they need to be during the build (don’t link it yet)

2) Create a WMI filter called “BoxBeingBuilt” or something similar. Have it do a query on something you know is true only during imaging. If you can’t find anything reliable, do something like this:

Select * from Win32_Environment Where Name = “BuildinDaBox”

3) Ensure your built process sets a system variable with that name at the beginning, and removes it at the end.

Tada!

Having issues pushing SCOM through the Windows firewall?

You opened the Remote Administration exception, you can ping it, you can browse shares, file and print sharing is enabled, yet it still fails?

There is one thing I have not seen documented in the SCOM installation/deployment guides: The agent actually adds an exception for itself when it runs, so if you block local exceptions (What’s the point of having a GPO for the firewall config on your serves if you don’t?) , it will fail.

Add this to your Firewall policy, as a program exception:
%SystemRoot%\422C3AB1-32E0-4411-BF66-A84FEEFCC8E2\MOMAgentInstaller.exe

Be sure to open it for the proper IPs only for added security. Then try to push it again..

Good luck!

If you are trying to perform EFS recovery by backing up encrypted files on a client machine and sending the backup file to a dedicated recovery workstation, remember this:

1) You need to be a local admin while performing the backup, and the restore, in order to back up the data stream even though you don’t have access to the encrypted files.

2) If a policy is disabling EFS on the recovery workstation, ntbackup won’t tell you that it can’t create the encrypted files because EFS is disabled. No. It will simply SKIP the files. So if you have files that get skipped, try to manually create a folder and encrypt it. It has to work else you will not be able to restore the backup properly..

Here’s my new PGP key, valid until August 1st, 2014. Yeah, I’m kind of sick of generating new ones yearly.

—–BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Darwin)
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=9tWC
—–END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK—–

For security reasons, it might be advisable to clear your swap file at shutdown.

It doesn’t provide great security, and you really should be using full drive encryption anways.

But in case anyone is wondering, for a 1.5gig swap file, this option (ClearPageFileAtShutdown) seems to add about 30 to 40 seconds of time to the shutdown procedure as it overwrites the file with zeroes.

Now turn it back off and install Truecrypt!

** Update ** Official word from Symantec

My favorite quote from that paragraph is: “ Releasing a patch unsigned is an extremely rare occurrence that does not pose any security issues to our users”.

Wow, I guess Norton’s too good, they don’t even need to sign patches. Then why do they ever sign them, if they can push unsigned ones?

Why was that patch hidden, and why did they delete true messages concerning PIFTS before the "spam” appeared?

PIFTS.exe is generating quite a buzz as nobody seems to really know what it does, and Symantec seems to be putting more effort at moderating posts than explaining what it does."

SANS page about PIFTS

Blog post by a guy who thinks that Slashdot is a web 2.0 social networking site for techies:

Digg discussion about that page

Anubis report (who knows if that was done using the real file though):

Slashdot Discussion

Washington Post "Voices"

Great screenshot from the Symantec boards, the thread should be gone in a few minutes..

And another one..

Possibly a great 4chan prank? Who knows, you’d think Symantec would release an official statement if that was the case..