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Tuesday, June 10, 2008 9:17 PM

The difference between liking and hating UAC?

Totally unscientifically, I have carried out a poll of people who like UAC (okay, a few security geeks like myself), and those who hate UAC - mostly my wife. Something struck me as both a surprising common factor, and also a rather obvious explanation...
Posted by Alun Jones | 5 comment(s)
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Thursday, April 24, 2008 4:47 PM

UAC - The Emperor's New Clothes

I heard a complaint the other day about UAC - User Account Control - that was new to me. Let's face it, as a Security MVP, I hear a lot of complaints about UAC - not least from my wife, who isn't happy with the idea that she can be logged on as...
Posted by Alun Jones | 6 comment(s)
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008 11:55 AM

CS-RCS Pro on Vista

I've been trying back and forth to get CS-RCS Pro , a version control suite, to work on Windows Vista. I like CS-RCS Pro for a number of reasons: Files stored in CS-RCS Pro are kept in a simple format, open and well-documented. As a result, if I ever...
Posted by Alun Jones | with no comments
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Thursday, January 24, 2008 9:19 PM

Vista's Secret Windows Firewall hole

First, the good news - it's not a flaw in the operation of Windows Firewall on Windows Vista. It's a design feature, it makes sense, and it fits in with the principle that the firewall should keep out unsolicited traffic. It's not really a...
Posted by Alun Jones | 2 comment(s)
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Thursday, January 17, 2008 9:24 PM

Waiting for Vista SP1?

In a previous article, I wrote about how to sound stupid by saying " let's wait for Service Pack 1 before we deploy Windows Vista ". Now here are a few ways to sound clever, by pointing to specific issues that will be fixed by Windows Vista...
Posted by Alun Jones | 5 comment(s)
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Friday, January 11, 2008 9:03 PM

Why you don't run as root

[... or administrator, or whatever] I like Roger Grimes, he's a nice guy, and he generally makes me think about what he has to say. That's a good thing, because otherwise he'd either be part of the same choir as me, or he'd be the sort...
Posted by Alun Jones | 4 comment(s)
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Saturday, December 29, 2007 11:23 AM

Is a NAT a security device?

I've been working lately on a couple of IPv6-related projects. First, there's a chapter for an upcoming book, and second, there's the effort to make WFTPD and WFTPD Pro work on IPv6, since it's enabled by default in Windows Vista and Windows...
Posted by Alun Jones | 6 comment(s)
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Monday, September 03, 2007 8:51 PM

Why complain about UAC prompts?

Jesper's article in TechNet Magazine on the purpose and future of UAC in Windows Vista and beyond reminded me that there's a whole slew of behaviours more annoying than UAC's prompting (which, as Jesper points out, is only the most visible...
Posted by Alun Jones | 2 comment(s)
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Thursday, August 30, 2007 6:08 AM

Let's just wait for Service Pack 1

Every so often, I'll hear it said, and frequently not in jest, "let's wait until Service Pack 1 before we deploy Vista", or sometimes "Server 2008". While it's true that Microsoft has indeed announced plans to test, and...
Posted by Alun Jones | 10 comment(s)
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Sunday, July 08, 2007 2:02 PM

diskpart 'shrink' needs a little work...

I'm playing with BitLocker a little, and I need a small temporary partition to encrypt and decrypt on a frequent basis. No problem, right? I can just open up Computer Management, select Storage, Disk Management, and then shrink a volume that has lots...
Posted by Alun Jones | 6 comment(s)
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Thursday, June 28, 2007 9:13 PM

Wireless PC Lock - part 2

Over the last several days, I've been getting more and more requests for my updated Wireless PC Lock software that I described way back last year . Possibly, it's because of stories like this one : At New York-based Big Four accounting firm Ernst...
Posted by Alun Jones | 11 comment(s)
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Friday, June 15, 2007 9:46 PM

Context menus not working in Vista?

I spent a while the other day trying to figure this one out. Under "Start", I have a 'pinned' Command Prompt item. I can't get a context menu (aka "right-click menu") to appear when I right-click on this Command Prompt...
Posted by Alun Jones | with no comments
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Wednesday, June 06, 2007 2:58 PM

Public, Home and Work networks

Here I am at TechEd, and I want to connect back home. No problem - I can use a VPN, because I have one set up on my server back at home. [Perhaps that's not normal, but I'm a geek] Now I want to browse my home network, partly because I want to...
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Tuesday, June 05, 2007 4:04 AM

Interesting empty file behaviour in Windows Vista upgrades

Did you upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista? Do you turn off Explorer's "Hide Known File Types" option? If so, try this: Right-click on your desktop, select "New" and then "Text File". Name your text file "test...
Posted by Alun Jones | 2 comment(s)
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Sunday, May 06, 2007 8:29 PM

"Vista Ready Upgrade" does not mean ReadyBoost-compatible

I bought two SD Cards today, each of which are 2GB in size (and each with a warning on the back that this means 2*10^6, not 2*2^30, bytes). One of them is to go into my wife's pink camera, the other is to go into my laptop, as a ReadyBoost drive ...
Posted by Alun Jones | 5 comment(s)
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Tuesday, May 01, 2007 7:45 PM

NULL DACL Behaviour in Windows Vista

Subtitled: Don't believe everything you hear at TechEd. I was inspired by my "empty DACL" issue , and what I remembered of Jesper's "Is That Application Really Secure?" talk from last June's Microsoft Tech-Ed conference...
Posted by Alun Jones | 3 comment(s)
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Tuesday, May 01, 2007 10:00 AM

Vista incompatibility isn't always Vista

In fact, it is very rarely Vista, from the problems I've seen. Sure, there are some programs that rely on features and functionality that has been removed from Vista - but by and large, that functionality was already documented by Microsoft as being...
Posted by Alun Jones | 6 comment(s)
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Thursday, April 26, 2007 9:50 PM

Alternate Data Streams in Windows Vista

Windows NT 3.1 was released ... oh, back in the early to mid '90s. Ever since then, I've been aware that it supported Alternate Data Streams, also known as ADS, or in some technical documents that didn't make it to final review, Alternative...
Posted by Alun Jones | 4 comment(s)
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Wednesday, April 25, 2007 10:16 PM

What do those dollar signs on shares do?

Most Windows administrators have used "hidden shares" from time to time. " net use * \\computer\c$ " gives you a share, if you have access, to the C: drive on the named computer. Occasionally, someone will suggest that hidden shares...
Posted by Alun Jones | with no comments
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Monday, April 02, 2007 12:01 PM

Don't catch exceptions

A long time ago, the developer of a competing product to my own WFTPD Pro decided that he was going to do something about GPFs in his software. He released a new version, and declared that you would never see another GPF from his software. How did he...
Posted by Alun Jones | 3 comment(s)
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