Microsoft’s EMET (Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit) is a free download from Microsoft that enhances Windows security by preventing common malware and exploitation software methods. It does need to be well-tested before deployment, but there are several legacy Windows methods leveraged by malware to get into a system and take control. Installing EMET provides very strong protection …
Category: Microsoft Security
May 20 2014
Microsoft BlueHat Resources
Microsoft has their own internal employee security conference called “BlueHat“. Here are session links from the past few years:
May 15 2014
Group Policy Preferences Password Vulnerability Now Patched
Looks like Microsoft finally removed the ability to set admin account passwords through GPP due to the Group Policy Preferences password exposure vulnerability. More information on how Group Policy Preferences are attacked is in the post “Finding Passwords in SYSVOL & Exploiting Group Policy Preferences“. Because of the security concerns with storing passwords in Group …
Feb 15 2014
Active Directory Security Group Resources
Laura Robinson (Microsoft) has 2 posts which are excellent resources when working on your Active Directory delegation model. These posts focus on the concept of an “Admin-Free Active Directory” meaning that there are no accounts in the powerful AD groups: Enterprise Admins, Domain Admins, Administrators, & Schema Admins. The posts also list all of the …
Jul 03 2013
Using Group Policy Preferences for Password Management = Bad Idea
Using Group Policy Preferences for Password Management = Bad Idea OR “How to Get Your Network Owned in Several Simple Steps” One of my customers recently needed to change the local administrator password on several hundred Windows 7 workstations and was trying to determine the best method: PowerShell script or Group Policy Preferences. The easy …