Patch Your DNS Servers! SigRed
KB ID 0001687 Problem WARNING: This is rated 10 on the CVSS scale. Affected Server OS: Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows 2008 R2, Windows 2012, Windows 2012 R2, Windows 2016, Windows 2019 Yesterday Microsoft released a critical notice (KB4569509) to address vulnerabilities identified in (CVE-2020-1350). Basically it allows a remote attacker to perform remote code execution on your DNS servers (unless you patch them!) The reason its...
Remove and Reinstall Microsoft WSUS
KB ID 0001679 Problem I don’t like WSUS, the product is OK (ish) the problem with it is, every time it’s deployed, typically the person it was deployed for never looks after it, or manages it properly, and months/years later it becomes a massive ‘bag of spanners’, which is never the client’s fault, it’s always the poor guy who built it, or the support company’s fault. If you run WSUS, log into...
Windows Server: Disabling SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0, and TLS 1.1
KB ID 0001675 What are these protocols? Both SSL and TLS are cryptographic protocols designed to secure communications over a network (remember the internet is just a network). Originally we had SSL version 1 and version 2. But they were, (to be honest) ‘a bit bobbins’ and full of security holes, so never really took off. Version 3 however did and was widely supported. The problem with version 3 was, (again) that was also ‘bobbins’....
Windows Server – Schedule a Reboot
KB ID 0001321 Problem Back in the day we just used the ‘At’ command to schedule a reboot, but starting with Server 2012 that was stopped! If you try it now you will see the following; The AT command has been depreciated. Please use schtasks.exe instead Solution (The Quick Way) Execute the following command (change time and data accordingly); schtasks /create /tn “Scheduled Reboot” /tr “shutdown /r /t 0” /sc once /st...
Microsoft Edge on Server 2019/2016 (and Citrix)
KB ID 0001657 Problem In a fit of lunacy Microsoft have called ‘their’ new browser Microsoft Edge, so we can spend the next few months confusing it with Edge. Plus every Google search for GPO settings, error messages etc will all now show search results for the old Edge Browser not the new Microsoft Edge browser! Perhaps the same doofus at Microsoft who called the Exchange sync Active Sync when Microsoft already had a...
Group Policy: Item-Level Targeting
KB ID 0001654 Problem Yesterday I wrote a post about Deploying a ‘Mapped’ Drive to a couple of users using Group Policy. This received a comment that was basically ‘Why not simply use Client Targeting?’ To be fair that’s a good point, I was using a Group Policy Preference and they can be specifically targeted. So here’s how to do that. Solution If you do not already have one, create a group for your...