Launching All the Attacks with Armitage

Kali Linux includes a GUI for Metasploit called Armitage. In addition to being a front-end and convenient GUI, Armitage offers automation of some common processes and some extra displays and features.

For example, Armitage has an option called Hail Mary. Upon activation, it will launch every attack it knows about against every host you've added to your workspace. This is obviously not stealthy at all, but in my opinion it's a great way to check if your systems are vulnerable to anything.

After activation, you'll see each attack as it's sent, and then after 30 seconds you'll see a list of shells successfully opened. If there's even one, some service running on the machine, if not the machine itself, is easily compromised.

Testing Hard Drives by Paging

I recently got a drive of uncertain quality that I needed to test. I had lots of time and also needed to test for infant mortality, so I decided to actually use it as a drive for a while. However, I don't really have anything that I want to keep on a separate drive, and I can't keep this drive forever.

So, I decided to move my system's page file to the tested drive. This can be done easily by opening the Virtual Memory dialog (under System Properties → Performance Options), unchecking "automatically manage paging file size for all drives", and configuring Windows to have no paging file on the OS drive but a system-managed paging file on the tested drive.

When the testing is complete, the pagefile can be moved back onto the main drive using the same dialog. If the drive dies - as it will pretty quickly if it's bad - then the compute can be booted into Safe Mode to move the pagefile back onto the main disk. Reboots are required after changing virtual memory settings.

FMod - Buffering Optimization?

I remembered that Abiathar switched to double-buffered graphics back even before it had the notion of a "plane" (when every render pass was done in the Paint method of that panel). I thought that doing that might no longer be necessary since it no longer has to rerender every plane to update the screen, so I added a configuration option to disable double-bufferedness.

It turns out that double buffering is still necessary; turning it off results in horrible flickering when placing a tile or scrolling, even on my powerful machine. However, most user-initiated changes - tile placement - shouldn't require a full rerender. So, I want to add a way for tools to request a repaint of only a specific region. That way, double buffering can be temporarily turned off (automatically) and the tile placed without flickering, fast. I'll work on this soon; it could be a big win for people with slower computers.

When Clients Don't See the WSUS Server

Today I got to debug a problem that caused several Windows machines of varying version to not register in, connect with, or acknowledge the existence of the WSUS server despite Group Policy's Resultant Set of Policy wizard telling me that all the policies are configured correctly. After some digging in the registry, I discovered that one client (the one I was doing all the diagnostics on) didn't have any mention of the WSUS configuration in the Policies registry key.

Somehow, Group Policy got faked out by the WSUS administrative template and didn't update the appropriate registry settings even after gpupdate /force or a reboot. The solution for the one client was to rename/remove the HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies key and, run gpupdate, and then reboot the machine. That fix is pretty inconvenient, and I'm hoping I don't have to make a GP startup script to perform it. Further investigation will be performed, but this is a reasonable solution if you have only a few exhibiting the problem. (I have around 40.)

All Network Card MAC Addresses Can Be Changed

In Device Manager, not all network adapters add the "Network Address" field to the setting list in the Advanced tab. However, Windows can force any network adapter to use a given MAC address (though some cards require that it start with D2, D4, D8, or DE).

The second method of this WikiHow article does the job quite well. You'll need to reboot, but it does indeed change the adapter's physical address.

WSUS Approval Deadlines

WSUS has this feature called "deadlines" in the approval dialog, and if you don't enable it, your updates might never be installed. That's because users can just not hit the button to start the installation (why would I want to update and restart when I'm in the middle of working?). The deadline causes the clients to start installing the update at that time no matter what the user says. Similar things can be done with the Group Policy setting that schedules update installation.

Using Windows Parental Controls (Family Safety) on a Domain

A while back, I was setting up a test domain at home and also wanted to mess with the Windows parental controls. I discovered that being domain-joined removes the Family Safety option from the Control Panel, and was severely disappointed.

Today, I discovered that it is possible to use Family Safety on a domain, and without any crazy registry editing or profile folder shuffling. There's just a Group Policy setting for it:

• Computer Configuration
• Windows Settings
• Windows Components
• Parental Controls
• "Make Parental Controls control panel visible on a Domain"

Switch that to Enabled, force a group policy refresh on the client with gpupdate (may require logoff/logon cycle), and control parentally on a domain!