Articles Tagged “Security”
23 articles tagged “Security”, newest first.
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NTLM and Kerberos Explained with Diagrams — Why Authentication Falls Back to NTLM
An illustrated comparison of NTLM and Kerberos: challenge/response, TGTs and service tickets, the conditions under which Negotiate falls back to NTLM when an...
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Will NTLM Deprecation Stop Your Business Apps? — How to Collect Audit Logs, and the Order in Which to Kill Dependencies
A practical procedure for finding out where your Windows environment and business applications depend on NTLM ahead of its retirement: audit policies, follow...
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What Is the TPM in Windows? — An Illustrated Guide to the "Safe That Never Lets Keys Out" and Measured Boot
An illustrated explanation of the TPM: how keys never leave the chip, PCRs and Measured Boot, how BitLocker and Windows Hello use it, the differences between...
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Hardening PowerShell — Logging, AMSI, Language Modes, and JEA
A practical guide to using PowerShell safely instead of banning it. Covers enabling script block logging and transcription, AMSI and disabling the old engine...
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An Introduction to Microsoft Graph PowerShell — Running Microsoft 365 After the Retirement of AzureAD and MSOnline
A practical guide to migrating Microsoft 365 operations to Microsoft Graph PowerShell now that the AzureAD and MSOnline modules have been retired: connecting...
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Handling Credentials Safely in PowerShell — Banishing Plaintext Passwords from Your Scripts
A practical walkthrough of moving plaintext passwords out of PowerShell scripts and into safe storage: what SecureString really is and where it stops, how Ex...
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Taking Inventory of a File Server with PowerShell — Capacity Analysis and Access Permission (ACL) Auditing
A practical procedure for taking inventory of a file server with PowerShell. Covers capacity analysis and recording access denials, listing old files and ext...
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An Introduction to PowerShell Remoting (WinRM) — Managing Multiple Windows Machines at Once
An introduction to managing multiple Windows machines at once with PowerShell Remoting (WinRM). Covers how it works and ports 5985/5986, what Enable-PSRemoti...
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PowerShell Execution Policy and Script Signing — A Practical Guide to Graduating From "Papering Over It With Bypass"
PowerShell's execution policy is "a safety feature, not a security boundary." This article covers the differences between policies like RemoteSigned, scope p...
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When Your In-House Windows App Gets Flagged as a Virus — Handling Microsoft Defender False Positives and Living With the Performance Impact
We lay out the proper way to respond when Microsoft Defender flags your in-house Windows app as malware: how modern antivirus detection actually works, how t...
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Integrating Entra ID Authentication into WinForms/WPF Apps — A Practical Architecture with MSAL.NET and the WAM Broker
A practical, hands-on look at integrating Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) authentication into WinForms/WPF desktop apps: the public client mindset, where ROPC s...
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What to Do Before Disposing of a Windows PC — A Practical Checklist for Data Erasure, Account Unlinking, and Backups
What to do before disposing of, transferring, selling, or returning a leased Windows PC — covering backups, data erasure, BitLocker, Microsoft accounts, OneD...
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Handling Windows Impersonation Tokens Correctly — Borrowing Privileges per Thread and Reverting Safely
A practical guide to Windows impersonation tokens — access tokens, primary tokens, thread tokens, impersonation levels, RevertToSelf, and .NET's WindowsIdent...
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Why Windows Became What It Is Today: The Evolution of Windows Through a Developer's Eyes
A look at the changes from Windows 95 to Windows 11 — not as a visual timeline, but from a Windows application developer's perspective: compatibility, stabil...
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Why Windows Shows "Windows protected your PC"
Why your app triggers "Windows protected your PC": SmartScreen checks publisher reputation, not just signatures. Compare OV/EV certs, MSIX, and the Store.
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Pseudo-Random vs. True Random Numbers - How Do You Actually Tell Them Apart?
Pseudo-random (PRNG) vs true random (TRNG): PRNGs are deterministic and seeded; TRNGs harvest physical entropy. How to tell them apart and when each fits.
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Security Design for Auto-Update - Why HTTPS Alone Is Not Enough
We treat auto-update as a trust boundary and walk through signed metadata, client-side verification, key separation, rollback protection, and fail-closed des...
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A Practical Procedure for Identifying the Scheme Behind a Hash String
When identifying the scheme behind a hash string left in logs or a DB, it helps to look at the prefix, separators, character set, and length, in that order. ...
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How Windows DLL Name Resolution Works - Search Order and SxS
Where does LoadLibrary actually look? Walk through the Windows DLL search order, Known DLLs, API sets, and SxS manifests, and how to prevent DLL hijacking.
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When Do You Actually Need Administrator Privileges on Windows? - UAC, Protected Areas, and How to Tell by Design
A practical look at when administrator privileges are required on Windows, from the perspectives of UAC, protected areas, services, drivers, and per-user/per...
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How to Concretely Isolate "Only the Operations That Need Administrator Privileges" in a Windows App
A concrete walkthrough of keeping a Windows app UI at asInvoker while isolating only the administrator-privileged operations into a helper EXE, covering UAC,...
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Storing Secrets in Windows Apps - Avoiding Plaintext Configuration with DPAPI
To avoid storing connection credentials and API tokens in plaintext configuration files in Windows apps, we walk through DPAPI / ProtectedData, the differenc...
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A Minimum Security Checklist for Windows App Development
A checklist-style guide to the security basics for WPF / WinForms / WinUI / C++ / C# business apps: privileges, signing, updates, secrets, HTTPS, input valid...