Check out a 'Query Analyzer/SSMS' for Log Parser called Log Parser Lizard

As any incident responder will agree, you can never have too many logs. That is, of course, until you have to analyze them! I was recently on an engagement where our team had to review hundreds of gigabytes of logs looking for evidence of hacking activity. I was quickly reminded of how much I love Microsoft Log Parser. Log Parser is often misunderstood and underestimated. It could possibly be the

Buffer.BlockCopy not as fast as you think

I recently wrote a quick test to prove something, that ended up being wrong…Of course this is the way of science. You form a hypothesis, then you test. The results should prove or disprove your theory. The HypothesisOk, my theory was that Buffer.BlockCopy() would outperform our current Array.Copy routines on the page level.When we are loading records off a page, we have to extract some parts of

Mallory – Transparent TCP & UDP Proxy

Mallory is a transparent TCP and UDP proxy. It can be used to get at those hard to intercept network streams, assess those tricky mobile web applications, or maybe just pull a prank on your friend.In more technical terms, Mallory is an extensible TCP/UDP man in the middle proxy that is designed to be run as a gateway. The goal is to man in the middle traffic for testing purposes. The ideal setup

How do specify that a shortcut should not be promoted as newly-installed on the Start menu?

Windows XP employed a number of heuristics to determine which Start menu shortcuts should be promoted when an application is newly-installed. But what if those heuristics end up guessing wrong?You can set the System.App­User­Model.Exclude­From­Show­In­New­Install property to VARIANT_TRUE to tell the Start menu, "I am not the primary entry point for the program; I'm a secondary shortcut, like a

ClickOnce, TaskDialogs, Common Controls and WPF Applications

One of the things that I talked a little about in my talk about “Modern Windows Applications on Windows 7” was around the idea of using a TaskDialog when you’re trying to get a response from the user rather than using your own custom dialog or a MessageBox or similar. As an aside, this isn’t just about TaskDialogs and MessageBoxes and so on – there’s other reasons why you would want to get the

Kerberos Debugging Tips

I worked on adding Kerberos support for Apache Rampart and WSS4J during last few weeks and interop testing with WCF.Following lists some useful debugging tips I came across..1. How to list all the Kerberos tickets issued to the logged in client principal in Windows c:\Program Files (x86)\Resource Kit>klistCurrent LogonId is 0:0x29a6fCached Tickets: (2)#0>     Client: administrator @ WSO2.COM

What should be considered when NOLOCK hint is used

IntroductionWith SQL Server the NOLOCK hint is very tempting especially with SELECT statements where at least one of the tables is frequently updated. Using the NOLOCK removes all queueing problems and the SELECT statement runs smoothly, but not without side effetcs. Why do we need a hint at allFirst question might be that why do we need to add this hint to get the statement running without

Google Rolls Out Two-Factor Authentication For Everyone. You Should Use It

Given how much data we’re trusting to online sites these days — email, search history, even voice calls — the repercussions to having our account passwords phished, hacked, or guessed are worse than ever. Unfortunately as far as consumers are concerned, account security has been stagnant for years: nearly every service requires a username and password, and that’s it. Cue the scary music and a

Building a database installer with WiX, datadude and Visual Studio 2010

Today I have been using Windows Installer XML (WiX) to build an installer (.msi file) that would install a SQL Server database on a server of my choosing; the source code for that database lives in datadude (a tool which you may know by one of quite a few other names). The basis for this work was a most excellent blog post by Duke Kamstra entitled Implementing a WIX installer that calls the GDR

Securing your SSH Server

One of the most common questions that I see in my favorite IRC channel is: "How can I secure sshd on my server?" There's no single right answer, but most systems administrators combine multiple techniques to provide as much security as possible with the least inconvenience to the end user. Here are my favorite techniques listed from most effective to least effective:SSH key pairsBy disabling