Pinging an IPv4 Network Address

Now that most Windows machines have IPv6 installed by default, I have noticed that when you do a ping of a machine, you will get the IPv6 address instead of the IPv4 address!!

Well, I still prefer reading and remembering the IPv4 addresses, so I wanted to find out how to get the IPv4 address instead when I performed a ping.

Thankfully, it was rather easy to accomplish as follows:

ping MYSERVER -4

That was all that was needed to return the IPv4 address!

If I still want to get the IPv6 address, I can get it by just changing the command to this instead:

ping MYSERVER -6

How simple is that??

IP and Network Scanner for Windows

I was recently helping a friend determine the devices on his network when we discovered that his router was so old that it did not list out the attached devices on the network!

Therefore, I decided to start searching for networking tools that would list out all of the devices on the network and came across Advanced IP Scanner: http://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/index2.php

It allowed me to easily scan all of the devices on the network and not only list out the names of the devices and their respective IP addresses, but also the manufacturer of many of the devices such as Samsung, Apple, Lite-On etc.!

It was a very handy tool to do network discovery and I would recommend it to anyone that may find themselves in a similar situation with no easy way to determine the network devices directly from the router.

Netsparker scanning of a secured ASP.NET Web site

I was recently trying to use Netsparker to perform a vulnerability scan of my secured ASP.NET Website (using Forms Authentication), when I discovered that Netsparker could not properly authenticate against my website with the credentials I provided!

Well, Netsparker support provided me with a workaround for using Custom Cookies to authenticate against my website:

https://netsparker.zendesk.com/entries/351822-Custom-Cookies

https://netsparker.zendesk.com/entries/260427-how-can-i-set-custom-cookies-for-a-website

In order to view the necessary custom cookies for your website, you will need to use Developer Tools such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, IE Developer Tools or Telerik Fiddler to copy the Cookie information and then subsequently paste it into Netsparker for passing the necessary authentication request credentials.

Netsparker Web Vulnerability Scanner

I was recently investigating Web Vulnerability Scanners and I came across Netsparker: https://www.netsparker.com/web-vulnerability-scanner/

I downloaded the demo and requested a fully functional trial version as well.

Overall, this is an excellent easy-to-use security scanning tool, and the demo version provides very useful information about the types of vulnerabilities that can be found in an ASP.NET Web Application.

Unfortunately, the demo site that they use (http://aspnet.testsparker.com) is an ASP.NET Web Forms Web Application and therefore will exhibit a different set of security vulnerabilities than the newer ASP.NET MVC Framework which many companies are using.

The lack of an ASP.NET MVC Demo Site significantly detracts from the usefulness of the demo for anyone evaluating this software for themselves (especially for modern ASP.NET development teams).

However, the friendly sales and support staff definitely makes up for this shortcoming to provide an excellent overall web security vulnerability scanner.

The Standard edition allows for 3 Websites (3 unique FQDNs) while the Professional edition allows for an unlimited number of websites (unlimited FQDNs).

The Standard edition will suit most organizations that have an autodeploy server and are not using host headers or subdomains to access the various different Web Applications.  Therefore, http://myserver.mycompany.com/App1 and http://myserver.mycompany.com/App2 and http://myserver.mycompany.com/App3 all still qualify as a single website whereas http://myapp1.mycompany.com and http://myapp2.mycompany.com would qualify as 2 separate websites.

If you are looking to incorporate Web Vulnerability testing int your development process, you should definitely take a look at Netsparker!!

Security vulnerability scanning with Burp Suite Professional

If you are using Burp Suite Professional to do your Security Vulnerability scans, you may notice that setting up your environment to simply run on a Windows OS is a rather tedious operation:  https://portswigger.net/burp/help/suite_gettingstarted.html

Well, I LOVE automation, so I decided to create PowerShell scripts to configure the most common operations needed to set up and use Burp Suite:

$regKey="HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings"

$proxyServer = ""

$proxyAddress = "127.0.0.1";

$proxyPort = "8080";

$proxyServerToDefine = "$proxyAddress" + ":" + "$proxyPort";

Write-Host "Retrieve the proxy server ..."

Write-Host $proxyServerToDefine

$proxyServer = Get-ItemProperty -Path $regKey -Name ProxyServer -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Write-Host $proxyServer

if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($proxyServer))

{

    Write-Host "Proxy is actually disabled"

    Set-ItemProperty -Path $regKey -Name ProxyEnable -Value 1

    Set-ItemProperty -Path $regKey -Name ProxyServer -Value $proxyServerToDefine

    Write-Host "Proxy is now enabled"

}#if

else

{

    Write-Host "Proxy is actually enabled"

    Set-ItemProperty -Path $regKey -Name ProxyEnable -Value 0

    Remove-ItemProperty -Path $regKey -Name ProxyServer

    Write-Host "Proxy is now disabled"

}#//else

$javaPath = "C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_51\bin\java.exe";

$burpPathPro = "C:\Burp\burpsuite_pro_v1.6.09.jar";

#java -jar -Xmx1024m /path/to/burp.jar

Clear-Host

$BurpCmd = @"

"

"$javaPath" -jar $burpPathPro";

"

@

Write-Host $BurpCmd

#Launch Burp Suite

& "$javaPath" -jar $burpPathPro

Using an RDP session across multiple monitors

If you work with multiple monitors, you probably have thought whether or not you can span multiple monitors for your RDP session.

Fortunately, you can!!

First, you have to make sure you go into your Screen Resolution settings and Extend your Displays:

Once you have done that, you go into your RDP Client's Display properties and select "Use all my monitors for the remote session"

Now you can extend your RDP session across multiple monitors just as you would with your normal physical computer's display!!

Why I am leaving GoDaddy for Google Domains

For anyone that has worked with GoDaddy in the past, you probably realize that they use a bait-and-switch model.

Essentially, they get you in on a domain name really cheap (as low as $1) and then when your domain is up for renewal, you could pay as much as $18 or more for a domain renewal.  In addition, all additional domain services are considered add-ons and of course cost more money.

To be fair, GoDaddy is not the only domain registrar that does this.  Even big names such as Network Solutions is absolutely notorious for doing this and hiking the rates even higher than GoDaddy.

However, that is why Google Domains is so refreshing!

Google Domains offers a flat-rate of $12 and no hidden fees and extras associated with hosting a domain name with them.

In addition, the transfer process was extremely easy and painless compared to many other domain registrars.  I literally started a domain transfer in about 2 minutes from GoDaddy!!  (It would have been less but I had to make some changes to my domain name in GoDaddy based on Google's instructions).  How cool is that?

I am already loving Google Domains and even though Google Domains is currently in beta, I hope it goes to production soon since I would love to see Google take a big bite/chunk out of GoDaddy's current bait-and-switch domain name hosting model.

You can switch over to Google Domains for yourself over here: https://domains.google.com/about/

Configuring a custom domain name for Windows Azure VMs

As many people know, by default, when you create a brand new Windows Azure VM, the default domain name is something like *.cloudapp.net.

Well, as you can probably guess, many companies want to use their own company domain names rather than point to the cloudapp.net domain name.

Fortunately, doing this is incredibly easy and simply involves adding some CNAME or A records to your DNS entries as outlined in this article: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/cloud-services-custom-domain-name/

Once I added the CNAME or A record to point to my Windows Azure VM, I could readily access it via my own custom domain name rather than by using *.cloudapp.net!  Very neat!!

How to determine what TCP/UDP Ports are being used in Windows?

When debugging and troubleshooting Windows applications, one of the common issues that arise is the usage of Network Ports on the machine.

When running multiple applications on a server/computer, you may encounter port conflicts or need to determine if the application is truly listening on a particular port or not.

Fortunately, there are numerous tools to accomplish this:

1. You can always resort to the command line netstat command (ex: netstat -aon) to determine the processes and their listening pors.
2. You can use the SysInternals tool TcpView to view the individual names of processes (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb897437.aspx)
3. You can use the built-in Windows tool ResMon (resmon.exe) and click on the Network tab to view the list of Listening Ports.
4. You can use a standalone utility such as CurrPorts (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html)

Personally, my favorite amongst all of these methods is by far CurrPorts.  CurrPorts provides an easy way to view Processes and dig into the details of individual processes.  In addition, it offers a filtering capability for processes not offered by any other tool!

Therefore, if you are trying to troubleshoot the network ports your Windows system is operating on, I would highly recommend using CurrPorts!

CAT5, CAT5e and CAT6 cables

I have been mainly a software developer for most of my career and I knew just enough about networking to set things up in my home office and maybe help a few friends along the way.

However, I had never done much investigation into the cabling used in Networking such as the differences in CAT5, CAT5e and CAT6 cables.  I just figured that if I was using Gigabit hardware (Gigabit routers, Gigabit switches and Gigabit network cards) I would be running a Gigabit network--right???  Wrong!!!

After I was experiencing extremely slow performance copying files from my NAS device over to my home computer I began investigating some possible solutions.  Many articles recommended checking the cabling on my network to verify I did not have any bottlenecks in my network.

In the past, I always thought that CAT5 was the standard and really didn't know anything about CAT5e nor CAT6 cables.

Well, I soon discovered that CAT5 is a reasonably old standard and should be replaced by CAT5e or CAT6 in modern networks.  Apparently, CAT5 maxes out at 100 Mbps while CAT5e or CAT6 supports 1000 Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet).

Well, according to most articles, CAT5 was such an old standard that most networks would only have CAT5e cable anyway.

In any case, I decided to look through the mess of cables in my home network and replace them all with the newer standard of CAT6 cables. 

Fortunately, one of my friends told me that I could tell what type of cable I had on my network by looking at the fine print on the cable.

Well, as I started going through and replacing all of my network cables with CAT6 cables I started reviewing all of my cables to see what type they were.  For the most part, every single cable I came across was CAT5e.

When I finally started disconnecting the final cords in my network, I found a cable that connected my Gigabit router to my Gigabit switch.  As I looked closely at the cable I discovered it was a plain old CAT5 cable!!! 

This was the bottleneck in my entire network that was causing my whole network to run at 100 Mbps rather than the full Gigabit speeds it was capable of running!!

Apparently, I had kept this cable around for many years as I was collecting cables from various networking devices I had purchased over the years.  Every router or modem ships with its own networking cable, so this cable must have come from a very old device that I had purchased long ago. 

As you can guess, once I replaced this cable my network was running smoothly, all of the lights on my Gigabit switch were lit up (2 lights indicate Gigabit, while only 1 light indicates either 10 Mbps or 100 Mbps) and my file copies from my NAS device went from 10 MB/sec to 80 MB/sec!!!  Woo hoo!!

Vonage outgoing ring tone problem and ARRIS Modem

I recently switched my Internet Service Provider (ISP) from AT & T to Wide Open West (WOW!) which switched my modem from 2WIRE to an ARRIS DG860 modem.

Unfortunately, a side effect or consequence of this change was that my Vonage service immediately began experiencing problems namely that I could no longer hear a ring tone on outgoing calls.

After hours of speaking with 2 different Vonage customer support representatives, I did not figure out that the ARRIS modem has a firewall setting which disrupts my Vonage VOIP service.  Therefore, I decided to turn off my firewall settings as depicted below on my ARRIS modem to see if I could get it to resume normal Vonage operation and instead rely on my Vonage VPortal firewall settings to protect me from external attackers.

Once I disabled my ARRIS modem firewall settings, of course my Vonage service returned to normal operation!

Google Public DNS

If you are having problems with DNS lookups and you are not sure if it is due to your ISP, the easiest way to solve this problem is to use Google Public DNS.

You can find instructions for setting up Google Public DNS here:

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/