Enable Night-Reading Mode with iOS

To enable a dimmed “night” display mode for any application with an iOS device, tap the Settings icon and choose General –> Accessibility –> Triple-click Home and and set it to “Toggle White on Black.”

Press the Home button to exit Settings and launch any reading app.  Triple-click the Home button in quick succession and it should enable white-on-black effect.  Triple-click again to switch back to the default normal mode.  The main downside is that images (both within apps and on the web) will look like photographic negatives instead of normal photographs.

Copy Output from Command Line Applications to the Clipboard

With Windows Vista and 7, an option is available to copy output from the command line to the Clipboard by piping it into the clip command:

command | clip

Below is an example of copying the output of the tasklist command to the Clipboard.

The contents of a file can be piped into the Clipboard by reserve.

clip < filename

The example below copies the contents of the file test.txt to the Clipboard.

VMware ThinApp

VMware’s ThinApp solution creates an executable from one or more applications without the requirement of a client agent.  This program is normally used within a virtual desktop environment, but can be used with a more traditional environment.  Below are some screen captures from the 60-day demo that created an executable of Firefox with Adobe Flash.  The default parameters were used in the majority of the selections.

Application virtualization encapsulates the application into a single executable .MSI or .EXE.  Just plug in an .MSI or .EXE file to deploy a virtual system environment, including registry keys, DLLs, third-party libraries, and frameworks without requiring any installation of agents on end point devices.

Outlook PST Viewer

This utility allows the viewing of a .PST (Personal Folder) file without using a Microsoft Outlook client.  The same site offers other free tools such as an OST Viewer.

http://www.nucleustechnologies.com/pst-viewer.html

Kingsoft Office Suite

Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2012 is an office suite that offers a number of features for creating, viewing and editing personal and business documents. Kingsoft Office 2012 includes Kingsoft Writer, Kingsoft Presentation and Kingsoft Spreadsheet.

Kingsoft Office 2012 is compatible with all of the latest Microsoft Office file formats. It will easily open, read and write documents created with Microsoft Office as well as a wide variety of other formats. Microsoft Office can also open Kingsoft files without having Kingsoft Office installed on the same computer.

http://www.kingsoftstore.com/kingsoft-office-freeware.html

K2pdfopt

K2pdfopt (Kindle 2 PDF Optimizer) is a stand-alone program which optimizes the format of PDF (or DJVU) files for viewing on small mobile reader and smartphone screens such as the Kindle's.  It is meant for text-based files on a white background which may also have graphics or figures.  It is fully automated and can batch-process PDF/DJVU files.

http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/

OpenVAS

OpenVAS is a vulnerability scanner that was forked from the last free version of Nessus after Nessus went proprietary in 2005.   OpenVAS plugins are written in the same NASL language used by Nessus.

http://www.openvas.org/

Nagwin - Nagios for Windows

Nagwin is a port of the Nagios software application normally found on Unix/Linux for Windows.  Nagios is a popular system and networking monitor application.  All of the individual components (such as Cygwin) are included within the download package.

http://www.itefix.no/i2/nagwin

Microsoft’s PortQry Utility

Several years ago, Microsoft released a small utility to query for open network ports.  The portqry application can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17148.  A KB article describing the application can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310099.

Below are some examples of using the utility.  The –n parameter is for the IP address or DNS host name.  The –e parameter is for the destination port to query for on the remote host.

TCP is the default protocol.  The –p parameter can specify TCP, UDP, or BOTH.

The –o parameter allows multiple port values to be queried.

The –r parameter allows a range of port values to be queried.

Matriux Live-CD

Matriux is a fully featured security distribution consisting of a bunch of powerful, open source and free tools that can be used for various purposes including, but not limited to, penetration testing, ethical hacking, system and network administration, cyber forensics investigations, security testing, vulnerability analysis, and much more.  It is a distribution designed for security enthusiasts and professionals, although it can be used normally as your default desktop system.

http://www.matriux.com/

XML filtering within the Windows Event Viewer

Starting in the Windows Vista/Server 2008 time frame, an option was made available to modify or create a XML query to generate Custom Views within the Event Viewer.  To create a Custom View, access the Event Viewer application.  Right-click on the Custom Views subfolder and select the Create Custom View menu option.

Click on the XML tab and then on the Edit query manually checkbox.  Click on the Yes button within the warning dialog box.

Enter text for the XML query.  Below is some sample text to search the Security logs for the user account test:

<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0" >
    <Select Path="Security">
       *[EventData[Data[@Name='SubjectUserName'] and (Data='test')]]
     </Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>

When finished, give the Custom View entry a name and description.

Queries can include AND/OR operators.

<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0">
    <Select Path="Security">
       *[EventData[Data[@Name='SubjectUserName'] and (Data='test' or Data=’testtwo’)]]
     </Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>

To find additional fields to query on, access the details of an event entry and click on the XML view.

The query below looks for events that any data or field equals test

<QueryList>
  <Query Id="0">
    <Select Path="Security">
       *[EventData[Data and (Data='test' )]]
     </Select>
  </Query>
</QueryList>

FreeOTFE

FreeOTFE is a free, open source, "on-the-fly" transparent disk encryption program for PCs and PDAs

With this software, you can create one or more "virtual disks" on your PC/PDA.  These disks operate exactly like a normal disk, with the exception that anything written to one of them is transparently, and securely, encrypted before being stored on your computer's hard drive.

http://www.freeotfe.org/

How to determine if a CPU supports SLAT

To use Hyper-V within Windows 8, the CPU must support SLAT.

Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) is a technology introduced in both Intel and AMD flavors of processors.  Both companies call their version of the technology different names:   Intel’s version is called EPT(Extended Page Tables) and AMD calls theirs RVI (Rapid Virtualization Indexing).  Intel introduced Extended Page Tables in its processors that were built on the Nehalem architecture, while AMD only introduced RVI in their third generation of Opteron processors codenamed Barcelona.

Hyper-V uses SLAT to perform more VM memory management functions and reduce the overhead of translating guest physical addresses to real physical addresses. By doing this, Hypervisor CPU time is significantly reduced, and more memory is saved for each VM.

To determine if a CPU supports SLAT, download the CoreInfo utility from Sysinternals at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc835722.  Unzip the application and use the –v switch option within an elevated prompt.  If the processor does not support SLAT, dashs will be present in the EPT or NPT rows.

Windows Live Mesh

Windows Live Mesh is one of the available components of the Live Essentials suite that can currently be found at http://download.live.com.  Live Mesh has two main features:  to sync data between two or more computers and Skydrive, and to allow remote access.  A list of supported file types within the sync process can be found at http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh-sync-file-types-ui.

After the application is downloaded and installed, the initial screen will ask for a Windows Live ID.  Two checkboxes are available to remember the Windows Live ID parameter and password, and to automatically log into the service in the future.

Once logged in, the initial screen should be displayed.

If the Remote main menu option is selected, the link to allow remote connections on the computer in question should be available.

In this example, the Windows 7 computer was configured to automatically log in using a “swalker” account.  To allow remote connections, an account must have a password configured.

If another computer has Live Mesh installed and configured with the same Windows Live ID and has remote connectivity enabled, and the machine is connected to the Internet, the entry for the machine should have a green dot.

If the “Connect to this computer” link is accessed, a new dialog box should appear.

A dialog box on the remote computer should pop up asking for confirmation.

If an individual does not click on the Deny button, the current account will be logged off.  The original computer should now see a login screen for the remote machine.

To sync a folder, click on the “Sync a folder” link on the main page.  A browse dialog box should appear asking to select a folder.  In this example, the My Documents folder was selected.  A dialog box will then appear asking which devices to sync to.

Any remote computers that has Live Mesh installed and configured with the same Windows Live ID should be listed, as well as Skydrive.  The current limit with the Skydrive option is 5 GB total with each file less than 100 MB.  Between two computers, the current limits are 200 folders with each file size less than 40 GB.

The default for the sync process is to use the same folder (My Documents in this example) on the remote computer(s).  So any changes made on any client should be transferred to the others.

If you wish to check the status of the sync setup, click on the arrow to the left of the sync entry.

As stated above, the path used on the original machine is normally used on a sync partner.  To use a different destination folder or path, create a sync entry (Desktop in this example) but do not select any remote machines or Skydrive within the selection dialog box.

On the destination computer, the sync folder entry should be present for the original machine.

Click on the Sync this folder link on the remote computer.  When the browse dialog box appears, select a different folder.

Console

Console is a Windows console window enhancement.  Console features include:  multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, and different window styles.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/

AVStoDVD

AVStoDVD enables you to convert various AVI and MPEG formats to DVD compliant streams and burn them to disc, save them as DVD folder structure or store them in ISO format.  The program takes advantage of several Open Source applications that come included with the installer (AviSynth, ImgBurn, QuEnc/HCenc/ReJig/FFmpeg...) and are seamlessly integrated with AVStoDVD.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/avstodvd/

PowerSE

PowerSE is a script editor for PowerShell.  PowerSE includes an advanced script editor, interactive console, integrated help and powerful debugger.

http://powerwf.com/products/powerse.aspx

Rollback an update to an ESXi host

A VMware ESXi host uses an dual-image architecture in which the boot disk includes two partitions on which the ESXi image is stored.  The partitions are referred to as boot banks.  One boot bank contains the active image and the second the previous image.  When an update is deployed, the active image is copied from the primary book bank to the alternate book bank and the new image is installed into the primary book bank.  To fall back to the alternate image, reboot the host and press “Shift+R” when the screen displays “Loading VMware Hypervisor.”

Press “Y” and then Enter to reboot to the previous image.

Microsoft iSCSI Software Target

Microsoft has released iSCSI Software Target version 3.3, which can turn a Windows Server 2008 R2 server into an iSCSI target.  This free component provides storage over a TCP/IP network to clients using an iSCSI initiator software, such as the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator Version 2.08 (also free) for Windows computers.  There's also an iSCSI client inside the target package.

The iSCSI Software Target version 3.3 can be downloaded at:

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=19867

Once downloaded and extracted, several folders will be present:

The 64-bit folder should include two .MSI files:

Once installed, a new shortcut will appear under the Administrative Tools folder:

Right-click iSCSI Targets and select Create iSCSI Target.

Enter a name and description for the target.

Enter the iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN) for the target.

Right-click Devices and select the Create Virtual Disk option.

Enter the path for the .VHD file.

Enter the size of the .VHD file in MB’s.

Enter a description of the .VHD file.

Add the iSCSI target created previously.

Right-click the new Device entry and select Disk Access –> Mount Read/Write.

 

At this point, clients should be able to connect to the iSCSI target.  In the example below, the free iSCSI Initiator was installed on a XP client.  The node name is on the General tab.

 

To have the client view the available target, this value was added to the server.