Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

In the latest Security Swarm Podcast: “New Threat Campaign Distributing DarkGate Malware & The Massive 911 S5 Botnet Takedown,” we discuss the Monthly Threat Review for June 2024 with Eric Siron. You’ll hear about a new threat campaign distributing the Darkgate Malware using a technique called pastejacking and the 911 S5 Proxy Botnet takedown and how threat actors are exploiting Stack Overflow to distribute malware.

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 share your suggestions on the IT Pro Tuesday subreddit, and we’ll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

Now on to this week’s list!

xCharg shares a handy shortcut:

Ctrl+shift+click (or enter if something is selected) opens elevated without the need to navigate through context menus

And Double_Zout adds:

CTRL+Shift+Enter when using “Run” (Win+R) for CMD opens as admin as well 🙂

whatsmydns.net is a quick way to perform a DNS lookup of any domain name’s current IP address and DNS record information, instantly checking multiple nameservers that are located in different parts of the world. Appreciation for this one goes to Fancy_Possibility_47.

P0f uses an array of sophisticated, yet entirely passive traffic fingerprinting mechanisms to identify precisely who is behind any TCP/IP communications. Works without interfering with the traffic in any way. Kindly suggested by Nnyan.

Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

In the latest Security Swarm Podcast: “Windows Server 2025: New Security Features Revealed,” we discuss the upcoming release of Windows Server 2025 and the myriad security enhancements it will bring. We delve into various topics such as improvements to Active Directory, delegated managed service accounts, Kerberos protocol enhancements, SMB enhancements, hot patching, REFS file system for confidential computing, and extended security updates.

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 share your suggestions on the IT Pro Tuesday subreddit, and we’ll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

Now on to this week’s list!

Graph Explorer is a developer tool for learning about Microsoft Graph APIs. Lets you try out APIs on the default sample tenant to safely explore capabilities and work out app functionality. Includes helpful features such as code snippets (C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, and PowerShell), Microsoft Graph Toolkit and adaptive cards integration, and more. Kindly recommended by FakeItTilYouMakeIT25.

asdf allows you to manage multiple runtime versions from one CLI tool and command interface. Offers a large ecosystem of existing runtimes and tools, with a simple API, backwards-compatibility, and a GitHub Action for use in CI/CD workflows.  othugmuffin advises the new Mac user, “If you intend on using Python, I would recommend against installing it from Homebrew and go for something like asdf to manage different versions. You can use it for other things too; e.g., Go, Terraform, Ruby, etc.”

ssiws shares a nice shortcut: 

Ctrl-Shift-T will reopen the last tab you closed

themaverick1313 adds: 

Ctrl-W closes the tab that’s open 

and from pmormr: 

Control-Tab and Control-Shift-Tab cycles through your open tabs (forwards and backwards)

CIS Microsoft Intune for Microsoft Windows Benchmarks offers secure system configuration guidelines that were developed through a community consensus process. id0lmindapproved explains, “Using Intune to match CIS Benchmarks is really useful and generally good practice.”

Sidder is a simple way to manage User Profile Disks on the .net 4.8 Framework. The tool was designed as a quick option for identifying which User Profile Disk belongs to which Domain User and performing basic administrative tasks. Kindly suggested by CobraBubblesJr.

less-Windows is a standalone version of GNU less (without any dependencies) that has been compiled for Windows 10 and 11. This suggestion was provided by jftuga, who appreciates it as “a terminal pager—similar to more, but allows you to scroll backwards and search.”

The SQL Server Maintenance Solution is a valuable and widely used collection of scripts for running backups, integrity checks, and index and statistics maintenance. Works on all editions of MS SQL Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2022. Our thanks for the recommendation go to amgeiger.

Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

In the latest Security Swarm Podcast: “Passkeys in Microsoft Entra: Benefits, Implementation Tips & More,” we discuss passkeys in the Microsoft ecosystem, including topics such as the definition of passkeys, prerequisites, tips for implementation, and the user experience. We also highlight the user-centric enrollment process, the role of conditional access, and the potential challenges and advantages of transitioning to passkeys.

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 share your suggestions on the IT Pro Tuesday subreddit, and we’ll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

Now on to this week’s list

Ntrights is a Windows resource kit utility that allows you to grant or revoke user and group access privileges. This command-line utility works to edit account rights related to logon, system admin, service, and more. Our thanks for directing us to this one goes to thephotonx.

CVS is an open-source version control system that allows you to record the history of sources, files, and documents. Offers some nice advantages over RCS, like unreserved checkouts and vendor-branch import/merge. The server works on most Unix variants, and clients for Windows NT/95, OS/2, and VMS are available. Kindly suggested by serverhorror.

Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

Check out the latest Security Swarm Podcast: “Did the CSRB Force Microsoft’s Hand on Security?” Following the CSRB’s Report on the Storm-0558 attack, Microsoft announced that security is now a top priority, with a commitment to address security issues before new product innovations. In this episode, we discuss the blog post which analyzes the Secure Future Initiative and its advancements.

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 share your suggestions on the IT Pro Tuesday subreddit, and we’ll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

Now on to this week’s list

LocalSend is an open-source, cross-platform file-sharing tool that works without a central server. Public source code, end-to-end encryption, and peer-to-peer transfer address security concerns, while the simple interface requires no registration and features no ads and no tracking. Pickle-this1 likes it for “device to device sharing.”

Late Night Linux is a weekly look at what’s happening with Linux and the wider tech industry. You’ll hear about all the latest news and releases as well as broader issues and trends in FOSS. Appreciation for the suggestion goes to ositstomc.

A helpful hint for those getting started with Linux, compliments of 27CF: 

“Really internalize the fact ‘everything is a file.’ Knowledge of things like /proc and /sys is invaluable. The ability to take arbitrary text, parse it (awk/sed), and feed it into another program can solve damn near everything.”

Microsoft Entra joined and hybrid joined devices: Pros and Cons explores the details of Entra joined and Entra hybrid joined devices. As a response to the trend toward enterprise-level hybrid approaches featuring M365, this post digs into what these two options are and how they differ from Entra registered devices.

Hiren’s Boot CD includes pretty much every utility you need to recover a dead OS or accidentally deleted or lost files—all on a bootable CD. evilkasper notes that it’s “being updated again, and that just makes me feel good.”

Krusader is a highly customizable, twin-panel file manager for KDE Plasma and other desktops in the *nix world. In addition to all the usual features, you’ll also find extensive archive handling, mounted filesystem support, file transfers with (S)FTP, advanced search module, copy/move queues and much more. Supports a wide variety of archive formats and can handle other KIO slaves such as smb or fish. Appreciated by Marmatee.

Powertoys includes Windows system utilities to help improve productivity. A favorite of HeKis4, who adds, “If you work on Windows, Microsoft Powertoys. It’s basically the sysinternals of convenience. It’s a bunch of open source Win10/11 utilities supported by Microsoft…”