Get this in your inbox each week.
Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!
On the latest episode of the Security Swarm Podcast: "Advanced Threat Protection: A Must Have in Today’s Ecosystem?" we’re discussing common ATP techniques such as sandboxing, time of click protection and spam filters—all of which are critical in fortifying defenses against malicious actors. We also explain how the natural-language comprehension capabilities of ATP are used to detect sophisticated social engineering attacks.
As always, we're looking for your favorite tips and tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.
We’re also updating the full list on our website here. Enjoy.
A Free Tool
UnnaturalScrollWheels is a MacOS app that allows you to invert the scroll direction for physical scroll wheels while maintaining the normal function for trackpads. aew3 recommends it "for those like me who go between dock and laptop and prefer my mouse to have a different scroll direction to the trackpad."
Another Free Tool
Locust is an open-source load testing tool that allows you to define whatever user behavior you like, and then swarm your system with millions of those users simultaneously. certTaker suggests, "If you want to test an actual application and how it handles network latency, potential buffering, QoS etc, then you could use Locust to stress-test REST-based applications and their APIs."
A Tip
Synssins shares a method for replacing an older Windows File Server with new, while keeping all shares and DNS intact:
- "Export [HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares] key from the registry. You want this key and everything under it.
- Detach the data disk (if a VM) and reattach it to the new server and assign the same drive letter, or robocopy the data from the legacy server to the new server into the same drive letter and folder path as the legacy server.
- Remove the legacy server from the domain and ensure the DNS record for it is gone. You'll want this DNS record pointing at the new server, and this will be done automagically in the next steps.
- Import the key, then run the netdom alias commands in an elevated PowerShell or Command Prompt.
It registers the DNS A record for the alias (legacy server name in this case), registers the additional SPNs, and adds the OptionalNames registry key. No more CNAMEs or manually modified SPNs.
netdom computername <COMPUTER> /add:<ALIAS>
Netdom computername NewFile01 /add:oldfile01.domainname.tld
You can repeat this command as many times as you need to for additional records.
More information can be found here.
Total downtime in a VMWare environment is less than five minutes, barring any DNS server replication in play."
Yet Another Free Tool
winevdm enables you to keep old Windows programs on life support by running 16-bit Windows (1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, etc.) on a 64-bit Windows system. Ojakobe explains, "Had a special case of a user who clung to their Windows 7 PC because their work was reliant on a 16-bit program from 1997 (and even on 7 it didn't run properly). Used the program above to make it run reliably on 10."
One Final Free Tool
LocalAI is a self-hosted, OpenAI-compatible API that allows you to run language learning models locally or on-prem using consumer-grade hardware without the need for GPUs. This RESTful API supports multiple model families that are compatible with ggml format. Our thanks go to mudler_it for this one.
P.S. Bonus Free Tools
Vagrant is a simple way to create and configure lightweight, portable development environments that can be reproduced quickly. Leverages a single workflow for easy building and management of VM environments. Kindly suggested by tamara_henson.
Ksnip is a simple and efficient cross-platform screenshot tool with all the essential annotation features. Whatsek raves, "Try ksnip! Went from greenshot to share, way too many features, found ksnip. Tabs... Awesome!"
Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.
