Hello, Ryan Ries here again with some juicy new Active Directory hotness. Windows Server 2016 is right around the corner, and it’s bringing a ton of new features and improvements with it. Today we’re going to talk about one of the new things you’ll be seeing in Active Directory, which you might see referred to as “expiring links,” or what I like to call “temporary group memberships.”
One of the challenges that every security-conscious Active Directory administrator has faced is how to deal with contractors, vendors, temporary employees and anyone else who needs temporary access to resources within your Active Directory environment. Let’s pretend that your Information Security team wants to perform an automated vulnerability scan of all the devices on your network, and to do this, they will need a service account with Domain Administrator privileges for 5 business days. Because you are a wise AD administrator, you don’t like the idea of this service account that will be authenticating against every device on the network having Domain Administrator privileges, but the CTO of the company says that you have to give the InfoSec team what they want.
(Trust me, this stuff really happens.)

Source : Ask the Directory Services Team
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Hi all, Ned here again with a quick chat about mixing Continuous Availability and Offline Files. As you know, we have severalpublic docs recommending against combining CA and Client Side Caching (aka CSC aka Offline Files) because when users attempt to go offline, it will take up to six minutes. This usually leads to unhappy humans and applications. Today I’ll explain more and give you some options.

Source : Server Storage at Microsoft
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We are happy to announce that an Android app for Work Folders has been released into the Google PlayStore® and is available as a free download.

Source : Server Storage at Microsoft
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The proper way to remove a DC server in an Active Directory infrastructure is to run DCPROMO and remove it. The following video provides an example of these steps...

Source : Canadian IT Professionals
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In the previous post, we installed Ubuntu in a VirtualBox VM. Now it’s time to install SAMBA and configure the domain controller.

Source : 4sysops
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Another day, another sensational report from Forbes. Oh my goodness, is Windows 10 really "phoning home" thousands of times a day? Nope. in fact, anyone who has even a basic understanding of how networks work should cringe at this shoddy report.

Source : ZDNet
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First things first, do not panic
This article will guide you through the process of cleaning a hacked WordPress website. The process is documented in an easy to follow step by step format; identifying the source of the hack, identifying the infection, cleaning the code, regaining control of your WordPress website or blog and removing the Google malware alert. This guide will help you recover from the typical WordPress hacks such as backdoors, malware, spam and other similar types of infections.

Source : wpwhitesecurity
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In the last post of this series, I described how to prepare your VirtualBox environment. In today’s post, I’ll show you how to install the Ubuntu server with the help of the netboot.xyz iPXE .iso.

Source : 4sysops
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Fast startup was introduced in Windows 8 and uses session 0 hibernation to save the kernel state to disk. Reading the kernel state from disk is 30 to 70 percent faster than a full system initialization on most systems. 
While fast startup should be beneficial in most cases, especially in combination with UEFI, it can also be problematic. For example, I’ve come across systems that refuse to connect to wireless networks without a cold boot, assumedly due to a problem with the reinitialized driver. But if an updated driver doesn’t solve the problem, you might want to disable fast startup.

Source : Petri
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If you want to run a domain controller on your network but don’t have access to a Windows Server license, you can use SAMBA, the free open-source software, and VirtualBox, the free virtualization software. We’ll describe the procedure for setting up a virtual server using VirtualBox and netboot.xyz iPXE and move on to setting up your domain controller with SAMBA.

Source : 4sysops
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After months of complaints, Microsoft has finally opened a Windows 10 Update History web site that will document the changes it makes to its flagship OS.

Source : Thurrott.com
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A new preview release model for the PowerShell ISE 
The biggest news is that we've developed a new strategy to ship a separate preview edition of the PowerShell ISE. This enables us to add new features and release them to all of you much faster than before. Previously you had to wait for new Windows or WMF releases before you would get an updated ISE. Thanks to the PowerShell Gallery, we can now ship the Windows PowerShell ISE Preview as often as we like!

Source : Windows PowerShell Blog
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If you have ever used the search feature in Windows 10, and there is a good chance you have, there is a new way to filter search results that should help you find what you are looking for, faster. It looks like this feature was added in a recent update and if you haven’t tried it yet, here’s how it works ...
Source : Thurrott.com
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Early on in many penetration test or security assessment, you will often find yourself wading through what seems like hundreds or thousands of text files, each seemingly hundreds or thousands of pages long (likely because they are). One key to success in these situations is to automate the analysis of these files as much as possible – you want to get the “drudgery” job done and move on to subsequent tasks that need real eyes on the screen and hands on the keyboard.
Let’s look at NMAP for instance. It’s a valuable tool, we all use it. But if you are scanning a /16 or a /8 network (or even lots of /24’s), the volume of output can be .. daunting? .. significant? .. collosal ?

Source : InfoSec Handlers Diary Blog
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A new hotfix is available that enables Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) on a Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2 to sync and distribute feature upgrades for Windows 10. Note that this hotfix is not required to enable WSUS to sync and distribute servicing updates for Windows 10. This hotfix also addresses an issue where Windows 10 computers are displayed as Windows Vista.

Source : Microsoft WSUS and Software Update Team Blog
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Building on our last conversation about HTTPS and Powershell, let’s look at another common thing you’d do with HTTPS in a system administrator, or in a security assessment or penetration test – let’s assess the HTTPS certificates themselves.

Source InfoSec Handlers Diary Blog
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As indicated in a previous post, we are making changes to WSUS 4.0 and later that will provide a smoother Windows 10 servicing experience. Because WSUS 3.0 SP2 is already in extended support (receiving no support at all after July 2017), and we are not shipping these improvements further down-level, it is a good idea to start planning your WSUS migration now. Here is some guidance on how to respond to the recent changes based on your current situation, with the assumption that you intend to deploy Windows 10 in your environment.

Source : WSUS Product Team Blog
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Microsoft is please to announce the final release of the security configuration baseline settings for Windows 10 version 1511, also known as "November Update," "Build 10586," "Threshold 2," or "TH2." The downloadable attachment to this blog post includes importable GPOs, tools for applying the GPOs to local GPO, custom ADMX files for Group Policy settings, and all the settings in spreadsheet form. We will also be publishing SCM .CAB files for this Windows 10 baseline shortly, and will announce their availability on the Security Guidance blog. (Note that we will not be providing updated SCM .CAB files for the IE11 guidance. For that content, see the attachment on this blog post.)

Source : Microsoft Security Guidance
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Policy Analyzer is a utility for analyzing and comparing sets of Group Policy Objects (GPOs). It can highlight when a set of Group Policies has redundant settings or internal inconsistencies, and can highlight the differences between versions or sets of Group Policies. It can also compare GPOs against current local policy settings and against local registry settings. And you can export its findings to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Source : Microsoft Security Guidance
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One of the great additions to PowerShell 5.0 is the new information stream. You can use this stream as a logging mechanism in your scripts and functions, which is something I want to demonstrate today.

Source : Petri
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