Category Archives: Windows

Bad Rabbit Ransomware

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A new ransomware has seen the light.

Bad Rabbit ransomware is currently roaming Eastern European countries.

Bad Rabbit is mainly delivered using a fake Flash Update.
This means we a looking a regular drive-by-attack and fake updates/malicious software from websites to get it started.

Secure you clients now!
1. Blacklist the hashes
2. Block the files
3. Lock the registry entries.
4. Remove your local administrative privileges, if you can’t? Limit them and monitor using: Access Director Enterprise

Bad Rabbit IOCs:

Hashes:

install_flash_player.exe: 630325cac09ac3fab908f903e3b00d0dadd5fdaa0875ed8496fcbb97a558d0da
infpub.dat: 579fd8a0385482fb4c789561a30b09f25671e86422f40ef5cca2036b28f99648
cscc.dat (dcrypt.sys): 0b2f863f4119dc88a22cc97c0a136c88a0127cb026751303b045f7322a8972f6 
dispci.exe: 8ebc97e05c8e1073bda2efb6f4d00ad7e789260afa2c276f0c72740b838a0a93

Files:

C:\Windows\infpub.dat
C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\drogon
C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\rhaegal
C:\Windows\cscc.dat
C:\Windows\dispci.exe

Registry entries:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc\Type	1
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc\Start	0
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc\ErrorControl	3
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc\ImagePath	cscc.dat
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc\DisplayName	Windows Client Side Caching DDriver
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc\Group	Filter
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc\DependOnService	FltMgr
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cscc\WOW64	1

Network Activity:

Local & Remote SMB Traffic on ports 137, 139, 445
caforssztxqzf2nm.onion

Files extensions targeted for encryption:

.3ds .7z .accdb .ai .asm .asp .aspx .avhd .back .bak .bmp .brw .c .cab .cc .cer .cfg .conf .cpp .crt .cs .ctl .cxx .dbf .der .dib .disk .djvu .doc .docx .dwg .eml .fdb .gz .h .hdd .hpp .hxx .iso .java .jfif .jpe .jpeg .jpg .js .kdbx .key .mail .mdb .msg .nrg .odc .odf .odg .odi .odm .odp .ods .odt .ora .ost .ova .ovf .p12 .p7b .p7c .pdf .pem .pfx .php .pmf .png .ppt .pptx .ps1 .pst .pvi .py .pyc .pyw .qcow .qcow2 .rar .rb .rtf .scm .sln .sql .tar .tib .tif .tiff .vb .vbox .vbs .vcb .vdi .vfd .vhd .vhdx .vmc .vmdk .vmsd .vmtm .vmx .vsdx .vsv .work .xls .xlsx .xml .xvd .zip

 

Enrique Lima Community Contribution Award – Submissions open until July 30, 2017

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Submitting Nominations: If you know someone who is deserving of this Award, please send an email to [email protected] and please cover the following criteria in your message:

  • Active MCT or MCT Alumni
  • Is the person actively teaching Microsoft technologies? How often?
  • Active in the MCT community
  • Demonstrates enthusiasm and a positive attitude with regards to the program and the community
  • Demonstrates passion for mentoring new and existing MCTs as well as others in the technical community
  • Willingness to volunteer within and outside of the MCT community. Examples could include the following:
    • Volunteering at a school for Hour of Code
    • Local code camps, user groups
    • Regional events
    • Large events, like Ignite and Build, Envision and WPC
    • Online engagements (blogs, forums, etc.)

About the Award:

The Enrique Lima Award is designed to recognize and celebrate the outstanding work of Microsoft Certified Trainers in the MCT Community, being awarded to only those who show knowledge, passion, and commitment to the Microsoft community as a whole, and specifically to the MCT program. This Award was established in memory of Enrique Lima; a husband, a father of two, a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and Regional Lead, Microsoft Valued Professional (MVP), Krewe member , SharePoint Community leader, and member of the Learn on Demand Systems (LODS) team.  Enrique always went above and beyond what was expected, building up both local, regional and international communities and everyday showed us all what the spirit of the MCT community was all about

Setting up the lab environment – Hyper-V: Virtual Machines

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Now to the good stuff

Usually when working with Hyper-V I use reference disks, mainly to save space on rather expensive disks. But is there much to gain when using deduplication? I was on sure, so asked in Tech Konnect

The response from Tech Konnect confirmed, when using deduplication, it out wages the other issues with reference disks, rather than saving disk space.

Since it’s not possible to create folders or groups within the Hyper-V Management Console, I will be using a naming standard: <Group> – <Generation> – <OS> – <hostname>

The first Virtual Machine will be a Domain Controller, what better way to start?

Virtual Machine Configuration:
Generation: 2
Startup memory: 4096
Dynamic Memory: Enabled
Network Connection: External
Disk size: 60 GB
Boot from the ISO File – Windows Server 2016 Standard (Desktop Experience)

The quick wins for a Generation 2 Virtual Machine

  • PXE Boot by using a standard network adapter
  • Boot from a SCSI virtual hard disk
  • Boot from SCSI virtual DVD
  • Secure Boot (enabled by default
  • UEFI firmware support
  • Shielded Virtual Machines
  • Storage spaces direct
  • Hot add/removal of virtual network adapters

Note: IDE drives and legacy network adapter support has been removed.
For more info: Generation 2 Virtual Machine Overview and Hyper-V feature compatibility by Generation and Guest

The memory assigned might be a bit overkill, but for now it will be OK.
When configuring the second DC i will only assign: 2048.
The complete installation time to logon was 3 minutes and 9 seconds

Both DCs can actually live with 2048 mb ram, so it can always be cut down, but keep in mind we are using Dynamic Memory allocation.

I will of course be setting up MDT and ConfigMgr at a later point, to streamline and gain a bit of speed.

 

Setting up the lab environment – Deduplication

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The next step for the lab or so-called home data center: Installing and Configuring Deduplication

I was going to use a USB stick for the Windows Server 2016 OS.
The main reason for this: DEDUPLICATION.

I did start out with a USB stick, but due to performance issues this was changed – read the follow-up post (https://blog.thomasmarcussen.com/follow-up-on-the-home-datacenter-hardware/)

The reason for having the OS on a separate volume: Deduplication is not supported on system or boot volumes. Read more about Deduplication here: About Data Deduplication

Let’s get started

Installing and Configuring Deduplication

  1. Open an elevated PowerShell prompt
  2. Execute: Import-Module ServerManager
  3. Execute: Add-WindowsFeature -Name FS-Data-Deduplication
  4. Execute: Import-Module Deduplication

Installing Deduplication

Now we installed data Deduplication and it’s ready for configuration.

My Raid 0 volume is D:
The volume will primarily hold Virtual Machines (Hyper-V)
I’m going to execute the following command: Enable-DedupVolume D: -UsageType HyperV

Enable Deduplication for volume

You can read more about the different usage types here: Understanding Data Deduplication

Some quick info for the usage type Hyper-V:

  • Background optimization
  • Default optimization policy:
    • Minimum file age = 3 days
    • Optimize in-use files = Yes
    • Optimize partial files = Yes
  • “Under-the-hood” tweaks for Hyper-V interop

You can start the optimization job and limited (if needed) the amount of consumed memory for the process: Start-DedupJob -Volume “D:” -Type Optimization -Memory 50

 

 

 

You can get the deduplication status with the command: Get-DedupStatus

 

 

 

 

The currently saved space on my volume is 46.17 GB
That is for a 2 ISO files and a reference machine for Windows Server 2016 and the reference disks copied to separate folder.

More usefull powershell cmdlets here: Deduplication Cmdlets in Windows PowerShell

I do love deduplication especially for virtual machines, hence most of the basic data is the same.
The disks are also rather expensive so getting the most out of them is preferred.

 

Follow up on the home datacenter hardware

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It’s time for a small update – the previous post is available here: https://blog.thomasmarcussen.com/new-lab-home-datacenter/

The datacenter has been running for about a week now – quite good…. but…..

I’ve been using the Samsung USB as OS drive – Samsung USB 3.0 Flash Drive FIT 32GB
It does have fast read, and a not that slow write, according to Samsung: Up to 130 MB/s

The week passed with setting up and installing VMs – using the actual VMs etc.
But when installing Windows Updates on the Hyper-V host, installing Features/Roles or anykind of configuration, it seems to slow down to useless/freeze.

Running a full Windows Update took about 2 days to reach fully patched level.
During that time it was useless as in no respondig.

I ran a WinSat drive test on the Samsung USB Flash Drive:

Random 16.0 Read: 8.87 MB/s
Random 16.0 Write: 5.45 MB/S

Random reads and writes seems pretty low.

The sequential seems a bit better:

Sequential 64.0 Read: 76.89 MB/s
Sequential 64.0 Write: 86.95 MB/s

The Commands used with winsat:
Winsat disk -drive C: -ran -write (Random 16.0 Write)
Winsat disk -drive C: -ran -read (Random 16.0 Read)
Winsat disk -drive C: -seq -write (Sequential 64.0 Read)
Winsat disk -drive C: -seq -read (Sequential 64.0 Write)

So I decided to replace to Samsung USB 3.0 Flash Drive FIT as a OS Drive.

The new hardware choosen ended up being:

1 x StarTech.com USB 3.0 to M.2 SATA External SSD Enclosure with UASP
1 x Samsung 850 EVO M.2 2280 SSD – 250GB

SM2NGFFMBU33 - StarTech.com USB 3.0 to M.2 SATA External SSD Enclosure with UASPMZ-N5E250BW - Samsung 850 EVO M.2 2280 SSD - 250GB
NOTE: the StarTech.com enclosure does not support NVMe, so did choose a m.2 SSD.

I know that StarTech also have USB 3.1, but i really do want to keep the USB 3.1 port free for an additional RAID enclosure when/if needed. Properly a StarTech enscloure but not sure yet.. (USB 3.1 (10Gbps) External Enclosure for Dual 2.5″ SATA Drives) still looking for a nice USB 3.1 enclosure that supports m.2 NVMe…

Samsung states the specs for the new disk as:

  • Up to 500MB/s Sequential Write
  • Up to 540/s Sequential Read

The actual performance test on the Samsung 850 EVO M.2 2280 SSD:

Random 16.0 Read: 276.51 MB/s
Random 16.0 Write: 271.37 MB/S

Sequential 64.0 Read: 388.85 MB/s
Sequential 64.0 Write: 383.71 MB/s

So in any case it’s quite a performance boost for the OS disk.

 

Disable SMB1 on Windows

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Disable SMB1 on Windows

To defend yourself against WannaCrypt and other ransomware it is imperative that you disable SMB1 as well as install the patches released by Microsoft.

Open Control Panel > Programs & Features > Turn Windows features on or off.

In the list of options, one option would be SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support. Uncheck the checkbox associated with it and press OK.

You can also use powershell

Set-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters” SMB1 -Type DWORD -Value 0 –Force

On Windows servers you can use the Powershell command: Remove-WindowsFeature FS-SMB1

Windows 10 hangs after patches May/17 (Windows Defender & Trend Micro)

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There seems to be an issue with Trend Micro and Windows Defender after Windows/ Defender patches has been applied.

The quick workaround is to deploy are registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender
The dword value should be 1: DisableAntiSpyware


In case it does not exist, go ahead and create it.
Restart and you should see things start working again.

If you have the issue, you should be able to deploy it using Group Policy Preferences.

NOTE: You can also enter safe mode and create the needed key.

Reference links:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749126(v=ws.10).aspx

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/threat-protection/windows-defender-antivirus/deploy-manage-report-windows-defender-antivirus

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode

 

Unable to create REFS file system on storage space with 3 drives

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So it was time for a reinstallation, time to cleanup and maybe rethink a few things.          I installed Windows 10 1607 Enterprise x64.

I had my old storage space running, but wanted to add an additional disk.

I had to move some disks around, hence the disks was required to have the same block-size. When running the storage space wizard, I marked the disks to add and create the new pool from 

I wanted to go for ReFS this time (some comparison here: http://thesolving.com/storage/refs-vs-ntfs-comparison/)

 

When trying to format the storage spage, it would switch to deleting storage space and show the following error: The parameter is incorrect: (0x00000057)


 

I recall having seen a similar error in Windows 8, the solution was then to create a registry key, to allow for formatning over non mirrored volumes, specifically for ReFS.

Funny think, it was still needed.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT]
“AllowRefsFormatOverNonmirrorVolume”=dword:00000001

Download RegFile


 

Add the key, reboot and retry.

 

Activation tool to use Windows OEM Key from BIOS

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A simple tool to extract and use the Windows activation key from BIOS.
The tool will extract the key Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line.
The key extracted will be install and activated using Windows Software Licensing Management Tool.

Tool is command-line based.

Can be used with your favorite client management tool

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Activate-using-Windows-OEM-db93ca97