I have an website up-time script that I need to deploy in a test environment. The script has to be run as a scheduled task in Windows Task Scheduler and is designed to be run on a 15 minute interval.
I couldn’t seem to be able to set a scheduled task if my life depended on it because something was killing it every time I would try to create it.
The error I got was something like…
Task Scheduler – The user account is unknown, the password is incorrect, or the user account does not have permission to modify the task”
After 30 minutes of scouring the various blogs and tech boards, I had found one little hint that pointed my in the right direction.
Check Your Antivirus Software
One post, that had not even gotten a vote up stated that I should check my Antivirus to see if it was restricting writing of files to the System32 directory in Windows.
Sure enough, I temporarily disabled Avast Antivirus which had been blocking the creation of the scheduled task and now my Uptime script is working as designed.
The morale of the story is always remember to check your Antivirus settings when you run out of checking permission settings as a troubleshooting step.
I recently purchased a new Windows 7 Ultimate PC and an iMac. This being my first Apple computer that I’ve ever owned I was really worried that I would not be able to have them talk to each other on the same network.
I was pleasantly surprised that with some setup on the Windows 7 PC and a couple of commands on the iMac the sharing of files was a breeze.
Step 1: Make sure you have a work group defined for your home network on the Windows 7 PC.
To do this right click over Computer or My Computer
At the bottom of the System Properties window under Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings select “Change Settings”
I Came home today and tried logging in to my Windows 7 PC and got the following error: The user profile service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded.
I initially felt a little panic as this was the first time that Windows 7 had ever given my any real trouble.
Steps 1-15 Below Fixed My Windows 7 User Profile Issue
If there is another administrator account that you can log into, then jump to step 7 after logging into that account. However, if you can’t get to any accounts at all, then start at step 1.
1. Restart your computer and hit F8 multiples times until you see a menu-like screen, if you see the Windows splash screen then repeat this step 2. Highlight and hit enter on Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Try logging in there. If it still doesn’t work, then go to step17 3. If you are able to login, once a command prompt pops up, type: net user administrator password /active:yes (you can specify whatever password you want for the administrator account.) 4. If you get a message saying “The command completed successfully”, then restart your computer by typing: shutdown -r 5. Boot up again pressing F8, but this time choose just Safe Mode. 6. You will be able to login as Administrator with the password you set in Step 3 7. Hit (windows logo)+R 8. Type regedit 9. Once the registry editor opens up, look for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList 10. In the left pane, find the one that starts with S-1-5….. and ends with .BAK; if you don’t find one, skip to step 15 11. Right click it and click Rename, then change the .BAK to .BK 12. Right click the one with the same numbering but without the .BAK and add .BAK add the end 13. Right click the one that you renamed to .BK and clickRename, delete the .BK 14. Eventually, you have switched the .BAK from the end of the second entry to the first. That should probably fix your problem. 15. If you didn’t find a .BAK then try this: Open Windows Explorer to C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local\Application Data 16. If you find another Application Data below the one you’re on, then delete it. That should probably also fix your problem. 17. If you can’t login in Safe Mode, then reboot and hit F8 until you see the menu again, then hit enter highlightingRepair Your Computer 18. Wait until all Windows Files finish loading, then hitNext when it asks keyboard language. 19. Try logging in here also, choose your user from the dropdown menu, and type the password, then jump to step 23 20. If that still doesn’t work, then if you have your Windows Installation CD still, put it in and restart your computer. 21. Hit F12 until you see a menu of boot options, choose Boot from CD 22. Choose keyboard language then hit next. Find Repair Your Computer from a little below the center left. 23. Choose Open Command Prompt and type: net user administrator password /active:yes (here again you can specify a password) 24. Close the command prompt and click Restart and jump to step 5
To disable the administrator account, type this in an elevated command prompt: net user administrator /active:no
Organizing large amounts of files can be a real pain in the ass! If you’ve ever had the need to organize large numbers of files then you probably had a script or really wish your had a script to do this incredibly boring and monotonous task.
I had just such a task in my role as a site reliability engineer for a set of load balanced IIS web servers a couple of years ago. I needed to archive the IIS web server log files by server / year / month.
The VBScript I’m sharing with you in this article, archives two kinds of files for the example. In this example they live in the same folder but most likely in the real world they won’t so adjust the script to your needs. I just show you two ways to parse the date out of files named differently.
IIS Log File
Custom CSV Log File
This example does not delete the original file after a copy has been moved to the zip folder. You can add that later or just manually delete all the files after they are all moved to zipped files.
From the example you should be able to figure out to implement this in your own use case. Good luck!
Organizing Files Using VBScript
This is one of my favorite VBScripts even though I did not write all of it myself. I’ve left credit in the comments for the zip file code I borrowed and implemented in this solution.
VBScript Code
'File System Object Prep
Const ForReading = 1
Const ForWriting = 2
sFolder = InputBox("Enter log folder path:","Select a Log Folder to Compress","C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\W3SVC3")
Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
For Each oFile In oFSO.GetFolder(sFolder).Files
on error resume next
'Breakdown file name
strFileType = Right(oFile.Name,3)
if strFileType = "csv" then
strTemp = Replace(Mid(oFile.Name,20,Len(oFile.Name)-4),".csv","")
arrDate = Split(strTemp,"_")
iYear = Left(arrDate(0),2)
iMonth = arrDate(1)
if Len(iMonth) < 2 then
iMonth = "0" & iMonth
end if
CheckValue = arrDate(1)
CurrentMonth = Mid(DatePart("yyyy", Now()),3,2) & DatePart("m", Now())
if iYear & iMonth = CurrentMonth and (strFileType = "log" OR strFileType = "csv") then
'Do not process current month file, only archive previous months
'msgbox("Skipping " & sFolder & "\" & oFile.Name)
else
WindowsZip sFolder & "\" & oFile.Name, sFolder & "\" & iYear & iMonth & ".zip"
end if
end if
if strFileType = "log" then
iYear = Mid(oFile.Name,5,2)
iMonth = Mid(oFile.Name, 7,2)
CheckValue = iYear & iMonth
CurrentMonth = Mid(DatePart("yyyy", Now()),3,2) & DatePart("m", Now())
if iYear & iMonth = CurrentMonth and (strFileType = "log" OR strFileType = "csv") then
'Do not process current month file, only archive previous months
'msgbox("Skipping " & sFolder & "\" & oFile.Name)
else
WindowsZip sFolder & "\" & oFile.Name, sFolder & "\" & iYear & iMonth & ".zip"
end if
end if
Next
Function WindowsUnZip(sUnzipFileName, sUnzipDestination)
'This script is provided under the Creative Commons license located
'at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ . It may not
'be used for commercial purposes with out the expressed written consent
'of NateRice.com
Set oUnzipFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If Not oUnzipFSO.FolderExists(sUnzipDestination) Then
oUnzipFSO.CreateFolder(sUnzipDestination)
End If
With CreateObject("Shell.Application")
.NameSpace(sUnzipDestination).Copyhere .NameSpace(sUnzipFileName).Items
End With
Set oUnzipFSO = Nothing
End Function
'To Test Windows Zip Function Separately
'WindowsZip "C:\test\test2.txt","C:\test\test.zip"
Function WindowsZip(sFile, sZipFile)
'This script is provided under the Creative Commons license located
'at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ . It may not
'be used for commercial purposes with out the expressed written consent
'of NateRice.com
Set oZipShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set oZipFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If Not oZipFSO.FileExists(sZipFile) Then
NewZip(sZipFile)
End If
Set oZipApp = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
sZipFileCount = oZipApp.NameSpace(sZipFile).items.Count
aFileName = Split(sFile, "\")
sFileName = (aFileName(Ubound(aFileName)))
'listfiles
sDupe = False
For Each sFileNameInZip In oZipApp.NameSpace(sZipFile).items
If LCase(sFileName) = LCase(sFileNameInZip) Then
sDupe = True
Exit For
End If
Next
If Not sDupe Then
oZipApp.NameSpace(sZipFile).Copyhere sFile
'Keep script waiting until Compressing is done
On Error Resume Next
sLoop = 0
Do Until sZipFileCount < oZipApp.NameSpace(sZipFile).Items.Count
Wscript.Sleep(100)
sLoop = sLoop + 1
Loop
On Error GoTo 0
End If
End Function
Sub NewZip(sNewZip)
'This script is provided under the Creative Commons license located
'at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ . It may not
'be used for commercial purposes with out the expressed written consent
'of NateRice.com
Set oNewZipFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set oNewZipFile = oNewZipFSO.CreateTextFile(sNewZip)
oNewZipFile.Write Chr(80) & Chr(75) & Chr(5) & Chr(6) & String(18, 0)
oNewZipFile.Close
Set oNewZipFSO = Nothing
Wscript.Sleep(500)
End Sub
Hacker Basics: How to Hide an Executable File Inside and Text File
Did you know that hackers can hide an executable file inside of a text file using a technique that uses something called data streams to trick a computer system from seeing text and or executable written in an alternate data stream inside a common text file.
I was pretty impressed the first time I watched someone demonstrate this. I was like, NO WAY! I really thought that this was some wizard level hacker stuff.
I’m no wizard level hacker, although I aspire to be, but I should be good enough to show you how to embed a simple calculator app inside a text file using an alternate data stream.
A big thank you to Cyber Security Expert, Malcolm Shore who presented a similar example in his Cyber Security Foundation online course I recently completed.
How Do Alternate Data Streams Work?
Way back in the old Wild West days when we had the DOS operating system, files used to be simple strings of data. Files are read btye by byte.
Later, in the NTFS file system, files are complex structures. NTFS files at a minimum contain a section called $Data where data is read by an application. $Data is the Data Stream.
Files may have many other sections or streams other than just the $Data section. This is what we call “Alternate Streams”.
THIS IS IMPORTANT: Windows only recognizes data in the $Data section so any data we put in an alternate data stream is not read by the Windows Operating System. We cloak data we want to hide in an alternate data stream. That’s the basics of how this works.
The data we are hiding could be a malicious malware payload or encrypted espionage message for our spy ring but in this example, it is just the simple calc.exe file you can find on any Windows PC for the last 20+ years.
Creating an Alternate Data Stream in a Text File
The screenshot below shows the three (3) files we’ll be using in this demonstration.
Simple text file with some string data.
calc.exe application or executable binary file
Secret text file with some string data
We can see the size of the text file is just 1 KB and the calc.exe file is 897 KB.
If we open the text-data.txt file with Notepad we’ll see just a simple line of text and the same with the secret-data.txt file.
To hide our secret message inside the the text data file, we’ll use this command line command.
Screenshot of Alternate Data Stream: Insert Hidden Text
Below is a screenshot of the command line command “type” that we used in this example to insert our secret-data.txt file into an Alternate Data Stream inside of another text file.
If we type the command “more” we can look for the secret message.
The screenshot below shows the text file that contains our hidden text being opened in Notepad where we can’t see the hidden text we saved to the file. If we type the command line command below, we can read the hidden text we wrote to our Alternate Data Stream by keying in on the specific data stream.
c:\test>more < text-data.txt:hidden:text
Hiding an Executable Inside a Text File
Hiding an executable file inside a text file using the exact same Alternate Data Stream technique we just used in the the Secret text file example above but this time we’ll simply replace the Secret text file with the Windows Calculator application executable file.
The screenshot below shows the command line command to save the calc.exe file in an Alternate Data Stream in side our target text file.
Notice this time, the Alternate Data Stream is named “mycalc.exe”. Don’t get to hung up on this, it is just a name that is basically meta data that is saved with the data that we can use to filter the data we get out of the file. I hope that makes sense.
Important to note at this point that the file sizes didn’t change when we inserted the calc.exe file. It is still showing 52KB.
How to Execute a File Saved in an Alternate Data Stream
To execute a file you’ve stored in an Alternate Data Stream, we’ll need to use the wmic command as is done in the following example.
c:\test>wmic process call "c:\test\text-data.txt:mycalc.exe"
As you can see from the working example above, I was able to embed the calc.exe file inside as well as text file and a secret message.
If the data is text we just need to indicate which stream we saved the data in to retrieve it.
If the data we hid was an executable file, we’ll need to use the Windows “wmic” command line command to call the executable from inside the text file by keying in on the Alternate Data Stream name.
In summary, the technique is crazy easy to pull off without any 3rd party hacking tools. It just requires a little Windows Operating System inside knowledge but is something every good hacker should know.
Many blogs and web applications are being hosted on cloud based web servers. Of those web servers, many are running some flavor of the Linux operating system (OS).
If you’re a Windows PC user who is using a Linux web server for your online project then you have unique challenge that comes with being a dual OS user.
How will we transfer our files from our Windows development PC to our Linux cloud hosted blog or web app? Enter Putty and the PSCP command line tool!
PSCP is a command line application that is typically included in the Putty installation. PSCP transfers files between two computers from the Windows command line as long as firewalls allow the traffic on the designated ports for each type of traffic.
Transferring Files with PSCP from the Command Line
If you’ve installed Putty in the default directory, it will be here.
C:\Program Files\PuTTY
Open a Windows command line by clicking on the Windows start menu icon then entering “cmd” in the search field then find and click on the cmd icon.
Navigate to the Putty Directory by entering the command below.
C:\>CD c:\Program Files\Putty
Let’s look at an example PSCP command to transfer a file from a Windows PC to a Linux cloud web server with a fake user named root, IP of 45.99.99.99 and a target folder of /var/www/html
PSCP Copy Files from Windows PC to Linux Web Server Example
In this article, I’ll share with you some scripts and tips I’ve used successfully in the past for monitoring website uptime even if your website is running in a complex load balanced enterprise environment which some of mine are.
VBScript Components for Uptime Monitor
Most people don’t know that VBScript can make Ajax HTTP calls but it can.
We will use VBScript’s ability to make Ajax HTTP calls to our website to see if it responds then put some simple logic around that response to log the results in a text/csv file.
It really is amazingly simple once you get all the code components together.
The ISWebSiteUp Function
The ISWebsiteUp function in my code example takes a URL string and makes an Ajax HTTP call to see if we get a HTTP code 200 or 404 returned meaning website loaded OK.
Once we get our 200 or 404 HTTP response code that, script returns true in the form of a text message box or if script times out you’ll get a false in an error message box.
You might be saying to yourself about now, what about the 404 response code for page not found. Yes, you might want to add some more code to handle that differently than a 2oo OK response but for this script, we just want to know if server is up. If we are pointing to a page at the root of a domain, we don’t typically get 404 errors in reality.
The Script Code
To use this code, copy it in to a text file and save it with a .vbs file extension for VBScript. Once you have the .vbs file, double click on it. You will see the message box with the message, “is up” or “is down”. A super simple example for our core application.
'isWebsiteUp: Takes String URL
'isWebsiteUp: Returns strMessage in Message Box
Function isWebsiteUp(strURL)
On Error Resume Next
Set http = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
'Set http = CreateObject("Microsoft.XmlHttp")
http.open "GET", strURL, False
http.send ""
'Only check for error of the HTTP Get request for 200 or 404 code returned. If any status is returned then the server is up
if http.responseText <> "" AND err.number = 0 then
'Commented out showing the response text. Use this for troubleshooting or exploring.
'msgbox(http.responseText)
isWebsiteUp = true
strMessage = "is up"
else
isWebsiteUp = false
strMessage = "is down"
end if
Set http = Nothing
msgbox(strURL & ":" & strMessage)
err.clear
End Function
call isWebsiteUp("https://www.google.com")
What the Web Server Sees in the HTTP call: WinHTTPRequest User Agent
The VBScript Ajax HTTP call to the web server presents itself as a web browser asking for the home page.
In the server logs a server admin may see this “User Agent” in their logs.
This script works out of the box. Google is the most open website in the world in terms of IPs that their servers accept traffic from as they are in the business of collecting data about everything including every system that connects to it.
Other web servers, like ones I run, may not be so forgiving. Many server admins use many tools at their disposal to filter HTTP request at various levels.
Here are some examples of tools Windows Server Admin have at their disposal to block or filter your script from connecting to their web servers.
Windows Server Admin Tools for Handling HTTP Traffic
Firewall IP Restrictions (Window Server Admin)
HTTP Response Filtering (IIS Application Server Admin)
This Windows WMI script using VBScript, retrieves the serial number of the local or networked computer.
To use this code, copy it in to a text file and save it with a .vbs file extension for VBScript. Once you have the .vbs file, double click on it and you should get a message box with the names of the logged in user on the specified Windows PC on your network.
Windows WMI VBScript
Function GetComputerSerialNumber(strComputer)
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colComputer = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystemProduct",,48)
For Each objComputer in colComputer
GetComputerSerialNumber = objComputer.IdentifyingNumber
Next
End Function
'strComputer = "XPS1234"
strComputer = "."
' Pass a . to run this on your own PC or add a string value for another on your network
call msgbox(GetComputerSerialNumber(strComputer))
If your in need of finding out who is logged on to a specific Windows PC on your network, run the VBScript below.
When executed, you’ll see a message box with the name of the account currently logged in the computer specified.
The VBScript Code
To use this code, copy it in to a text file and save it with a .vbs file extension for VBScript. Once you have the .vbs file, double click on it and you should get a message box with the names of the logged in user on the specified Windows PC on your network.
Function GetLoggedinUser(strComputer)
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colComputer = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Win32_ComputerSystem")
For Each objComputer in colComputer
Wscript.Echo "Logged-on user: " & objComputer.UserName
Next
End Function
' Pass a . to run this on your own PC or add a string value name for PC on your network
'strComputer = "XPS1234"
strComputer = "."
call msgbox(GetLoggedinUser(strComputer))
Stay tuned for more scripts in upcoming blog posts!
I’m breaking down a large VBScript I wrote as part of a larger computer inventory system prototype I built for what later became a much larger company.
This project was a big time investment for me that provided a lot of value to the company until they went out and purchased a commercial product and even then, the commercial product had things it did not do as well as my prototype.
The scanning volume eventually got so big that I had to run copies of the script on different parts of Active Directory at the same time to try and scale the scanning of computers on the network with all the data being stored in a SQL database backend.
This script and others I’ll be sharing in this series were contained within a loop of Active Directory computer records for a good size enterprise with about 10,000 desktops and laptops for some Active Directory OUs.
The first piece of code I’m sharing is for querying the Windows WMI to get a list of Administrators from a Windows PC. This code was used as part of a project to determine if any computers had unauthorized admin accounts we didn’t know about.
GetAdminstrators Function
To use this code, copy it in to a text file and save it with a .vbs file extension for VBScript. Once you have the .vbs file, double click on it and you should get a message box with the names of the admin accounts from the target device.
Function GetAdministrators(strComputerName)
On Error Resume Next
Dim objWMIService, strQuery, colItems, Path, strMembers, strAdminList, iCounter
iCounter = 0
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputerName & "\root\cimv2")
strQuery = "select * from Win32_GroupUser where GroupComponent = " & chr(34) & "Win32_Group.Domain='" & strComputerName & "',Name='Administrators'" & Chr(34)
Set ColItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery(strQuery,,48)
strMembers = ""
For Each Path In ColItems
Dim strMemberName, NamesArray, strDomainName, DomainNameArray
NamesArray = Split(Path.PartComponent,",")
strMemberName = Replace(Replace(NamesArray(1),Chr(34),""),"Name=","")
DomainNameArray = Split(NamesArray(0),"=")
strDomainName = Replace(DomainNameArray(1),Chr(34),"")
If strDomainName <> strComputerName Then
strMemberName = strDomainName & "\" & strMemberName
if iCounter = 0 then
strAdminList = strMemberName
else
strAdminList = strAdminList & " > " & strMemberName
end if
iCounter = iCounter + 1
End If
Next
GetAdministrators = strAdminList
End Function
' Pass a . to run this on your own PC or add a string value for another on your network
call msgbox(GetAdministrators("."))
call msgbox(GetAdministrators("NetworkComputer1"))
Stay tuned for more scripts in upcoming blog posts!
