what did you learn today? (part 2)
- Thread starter continuum
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Well, I spent all day with Broadcom support yesterday trying to get it fixed. The results? Hung up on twice so I had to requeue as no ticket was created in that time even though they said they were going to, 3rd call I got a Zoom because they said I had rights to my entitlements so they saw nothing wrong. Zoom showed the issue so they got it partially fixed. I can now see and download 1/3rd of my entitled software but not the stuff I need right now so new case created to investigate that now. In the process of doing that my account is no longer valid in the support portal (happened after I logged out after the zoom session) so I cannot actually see the case that was created nor can I create a new case, I have to call in again. I've been summarizing the woes with all this to my boss every week as more reason to ditch vmware for something else.
At this point you should engage your VAR/Reseller and lean on them to get this fixed via the partner channels.
I don't think partner channels are any more useful than frontline support at the moment.
Narrator: It can be.
Ugh Microsoft. TIL about Get-Unique and also the list you feed it has to be sorted for it to work, not that it's hard but still.
If you feed it "A,A,B,B,C,C" You'll get "A,B,C" out, but if you Feed it A,B,C,A,B,C you'll get A,B,C,A,B,C out.
If you feed it "A,A,B,B,C,C" You'll get "A,B,C" out, but if you Feed it A,B,C,A,B,C you'll get A,B,C,A,B,C out.
TIL that Microsoft doesn't have a first-party module for managing Windows updates (checking for them, installing them, etc) through PowerShell. You have to rely on an open-source project for that.
May be no more useful, but it pushes the effort off to someone else!
Well Windows Update has generally always been a dumpster fire in one way or another, but I've been using a VBScript to do basic patch installation for almost a decade now with good success. But Microsoft is killing VBScript because they want everyone to move to PowerShell. Hence it's rather amusing that they don't have a native module for that. The good news is the linked project is rather robust (and gives me more options than the VBScript ever did).
TIL I learned of the RailRunOnce registry key, a special registry key to run apps at startup of a Windows RDP Services Server session. This key is separate from all the other Run keys to auto-launch apps in Windows.
The most common use, as was mine, was to let OneDrive run in the background so a RemoteApp can use the user's OneDrive folders.
The most common use, as was mine, was to let OneDrive run in the background so a RemoteApp can use the user's OneDrive folders.
TeamViewer's corporate network was breached in alleged APT hack
The remote access software company TeamViewer is warning that its corporate environment was breached in a cyberattack yesterday, with a cybersecurity firm claiming it was by an APT hacking group.
www.bleepingcomputer.com
Looks like Teamviewer has been hacked again.
Our Canadian business uses some accounting software that uses an embedded version of TV's remote support for vendor support, but it uses all the same public endpoints as normal TV. We keep it blocked in zScaler and only enable it when requested. sigh
Did the attacker convince an employee to install TeamViewer on their workstation & got their backdoor that way? I saw some posts refer to that, but not sure it was joking (just desserts) or not. The reporting I saw didn't say that unless I overlooked it.
A plug for another tool that leverages powershell (same module as pswindowsupdate I think) for updates And rolls in other updating like chocolatey.
Releases · topgrade-rs/topgrade
Upgrade all the things. Contribute to topgrade-rs/topgrade development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
Sadly microsoft changed some tooling in the later versions of Windows 11 that breaks both topgrade and pswindowsupdate.
Windows 11 UsoClient failed · Issue #345 · topgrade-rs/topgrade
What did you expect to happen? Windows Update step to successfully exit. What actually happened? UsoClient fails with exit code 0x80070057. Snippet from Microsoft support regarding "exit code 0x800...
github.com
(champing at the bit to get Windows 11 LTSC, it has gone gold but not released beyond partners. Yes, I work for a partner(just too far removed from the microsoft feed) so it isn't technically illicit..)
When Microsoft started forcing updates in Windows 10 (which you find in my posting history over the years that I mostly agree with that direction) I expected Windows Update to get some decent PowerShell support. At the very least, I wanted something that could kick off updates from the command line reliably, something I've wanted built-in for years since PSWindowsUpdate requires changes to the default execution policy.
Instead, we get the retirement of wuauclt and the Windows Update log requiring a new PowerShell command to be read. So I guess we got some form of PowerShell, just not anything useful.
Instead, we get the retirement of wuauclt and the Windows Update log requiring a new PowerShell command to be read. So I guess we got some form of PowerShell, just not anything useful.
PS to read the windows logs has been there since 2012. But yes, it is very frustrating.
I'm doing all my testing of PSWindowsUpdate in Windows 11 23H2 and it seems to be working fine?
I don't like this either, but I'm working around it by just changing it temporarily:
Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope Process 
I think I saw something mentioning that Microsoft has too, and is just rolling out the change later this year.
That would be another of my many issues, no VAR/Reseller for us at the moment. I tried talking to the VAR we renewed with last fall but they are not on speaking terms with us right now.
"A penetration test with a post-payment option" is now my new favorite euphemism for a cryptolocker attack.
www.abc.net.au
'Citizens of Indonesia, we apologise': Hackers offer to release keys following national ransomware attack
The hackers behind a major cyber attack on the Indonesian government issue a surprise apology and offer to release the stolen data.
www.abc.net.au
Following along the outages.net mailing list and it looks like something has gone quite wrong for Hurricane Electric. Looks like for some reason their domain has been put into ClientHold and HE.net has been withdrawn from .net zone.
Holy shit lol. From NANOG:
What "better than Gandi" registrar would you recommend? I saw CSC and Markmonitor but that's a bit too expensive for just a few names and a small business. Is there something between the budget hoster for $20-50 a year and $10000? minimum account size for the top tier?
Route53, there are a select few ccTLD's they don't support which we use GoDaddy for.
Personally all Namecheap
Personally all Namecheap
Until late last year, our HQ’s voicemail for a 200k annual student community college district, was an old Packard Bell or maybe Compaq pentium PC.
NEC IP PBX.
We only got rid of our last ancient ASA 4 years ago.
By the time everyone is finished dumpling the latest hotness, we’re just getting roped in.
In 2010:
HP: hey, would you like to get a great deal on BladePC?
2023: finally finished unracking the last few chassis
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The Unified Communications module on some NEC PBXes I've deployed is literally Windows 7 PC that slots into one of the main chassis' expansion slots. It's a real treat to configure.
Ours was old enough that it was WindowsXP
One thing I have never really regretted was switching from the Cisco CallCenter system we had as our first IP PBX to a Digium Switchvox system (basically fancy Asterisk). It has been more or less reliable, customizable and has performed everything we have needed it to do without much complaint. As it runs as a simple KVM virtual machine, I can easily do snapshots as well as its built in backup that just compresses all its important bits (including voicemails) and SFTPs them off to a separate server. No fuss at all. The licensing cost is not excessive either, considering how important phones can still be and just in the last couple of years they finally got off their butts and made a really decent softphone package that works on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS without too much trouble. In the past they just had a really crappy reskin of some other thing or told you to use whatever SIP softphone you wanted but they never integrated really well.
We only used up to around 150 total extensions or so but it never even broke a sweat on the low end hardware we have it on so I imagine it could easily do up to 1000 without much fuss and you could break it out to a departmental setup if needed for over 10000 or something I would guess.
We only used up to around 150 total extensions or so but it never even broke a sweat on the low end hardware we have it on so I imagine it could easily do up to 1000 without much fuss and you could break it out to a departmental setup if needed for over 10000 or something I would guess.
Is it possible to pull the zone file of a domain publicly?
Found a domain whose DNS is set up on an account that is long forgotten.
I want to move it into are usual DNS with the other domains, but it seems like typical DNS import features can only look up commonly used CNAME names. There are likely other CNAME records that need to be pulled before I can switch the nameservers.
Found a domain whose DNS is set up on an account that is long forgotten.
I want to move it into are usual DNS with the other domains, but it seems like typical DNS import features can only look up commonly used CNAME names. There are likely other CNAME records that need to be pulled before I can switch the nameservers.