Windows

I had an unusual experience when using an Integral Crypto FIPS 197 device on a new laptop. This particular device uses TotalLock.exe on a read-only CDFS partition to enter the decryption key (password) to mount a hidden partition. When I went to access the device, i.e. run TotalLock.exe from the D: drive, the message: Failed to initialize secure device After investing the system event logs with minimal information, and checking the executable wasn’t blocked from explorer, I considered how Windows Defender might be affecting the device. ...

Photo by Tadas Sar on Unsplash The first step is identifying the versions of the OpenSSH components we want to install, for this guide we will only be installing the SSH Agent, not the server. All of the following will need to be executed from a Elevated PowerShell Prompt. Get-WindowsCapability -Online | ? Name -like 'OpenSSH*' This will spit out two capabilities, we want the client: Name : OpenSSH.Client~~~~0.0.1.0 State : NotPresent Name : OpenSSH.Server~~~~0.0.1.0 State : NotPresent Which we can install with the following command: ...

I have been updating this blog post over the years since I first discovered the issue with my computer in Windows Vista, now I am on Windows 8 and also on |FTTC broadband; |Path MTU Discovery seems to just work. I have tested the process so the approach and the commands still work in Windows 8, I however no longer need to use this process personally. For some reason that has escaped me |Path MTU Discovery (PMTUD) in Windows just doesn’t seem to figure out the MTU for a given path (something to do with routers being poorly configured to not respond to ICMP requests). So Windows uses the default. For the most part this doesn’t affect anyone, however if it does affect you, it really annoys you. Failure of PMTUD will result in some websites not loading correctly, having trouble connecting to normally reliable online services and general Internet weirdness. The resolution is to set your default MTU to one lower than the Ethernet default of 1500. Here is how: ...