Author: James

Unable to mount the WIM, so the update process cannot continue – MDT on Hyper-V

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Not the first time I’ve run into this issue and probably won’t be the last! While building a new Windows Server 2016 (Full) Microsoft Deployment Toolkit server when attempting to run the ‘Update Deployment Share’ wizard I was getting the following error message. Unable to mount the WIM, so the update process cannot continue. The solution is simple; if you… Read more


Securing Remote Desktop Protocol Port 3389 – Tools

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This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series A Windows SysAdmin installs and uses OpenVAS

Following on from more work with OpenVAS and after resolving issues around PHP/MySQL the next largest priority was flagged as issues with the Remote Desktop Server (this applies if the server is being used as a Session Host or is just running Windows Server/Client). Here are two pointers in the right direction to get these port 3389 issues resolved! SSL/TLS:… Read more


Upgrading PHP on a Windows IIS Server (Really basic)

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Following on from some recent OpenVAS testing and in turn discovering that some of our PHP versions were sorely out of date I’ve set about to patch and document all of the installations. In turn we have a simple guide on how to update PHP security releases! Please note – this guide is aimed at really simple single server instances… Read more


A Windows SysAdmin installs and uses OpenVAS – End to end guide – Simple Beginnings

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This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series A Windows SysAdmin installs and uses OpenVAS

Following on from the previous post (A Windows SysAdmin installs and uses OpenVAS – End to end guide – Simple Beginnings) in this post we’ll be using PowerShell, OpenVAS and the OMP (Open Management Protocol from Greenbone) to create a Target (a machine/device) to conduct some Pen Testing against, create a Task to scan the target and then generate a… Read more



A Windows SysAdmin installs and uses OpenVAS – End to end guide – Installation

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This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series A Windows SysAdmin installs and uses OpenVAS

This guide covers one (of I’m sure a 1,000) ways to deploy and use OpenVAS 9 in your environment on Ubuntu Server 16.04 for the purpose of White Hat Penetration Testing, more so it’s also written from the viewpoint of a SysAdmin who mainly works with Windows Systems (Windows Server/Hyper-V/PowerShell/suchlike) and so takes a very simplistic approach to the setup…. Read more


Mitigating SSH Weak MAC Algorithms Supported and SSH Weak Encryption Algorithms Supported on HPE Aruba-OS Switches

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Having recently setup OpenVAS (something I will likely blog about in further detail soon) I have found out that the default out of box deployment of Aruba-OS (formally ProCurve) supports a number of insecure SSH Algorithms with messages similar to the ones below logged even when running the latest firmware releases (YA.16.03.0004 on the 2530 series). SSH Weak Encryption Algorithms Supported… Read more


Managing Sympa (Mailing Lists) with PowerShell (v1.0)

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If you are running (or use) the Sympa Mailing List but also use Windows PowerShell then you may want to be aware of PSSympa which recently went v1.0 on GitHub and the PowerShell Gallery. In this release we have… Functions Get-SympaLogin (to login and get a session cookie – the result of which is used with all other functions) Get-SympaMailingListMember… Read more


Enable Sophos Intercept X on computers already running Endpoint Protection (Sophos Central)

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With the continued rise of ‘Next Generation’ Anti-Virus like Sophos Intercept X and PaloAlto Traps the question from many SysAdmins might be well how do I deploy these? If you are looking at Intercept X and you already are Running Sophos Central (with Endpoint Protection) the simple answer is a press a few buttons in the Admin Console. In short,… Read more