Using Remote Desktop Connection Manager

This tool is so cool I thought I'd take the time to tell you all about it.

We as IT experts, are usually required to handle the task of performing a lot of administration and configuration tasks on many servers and workstations.  In most cases, these tasks can and should be performed remotely instead of having to actually walk over to that machine. Remote connection mechanisms exist to allow us to perform these tasks. While there are some nice 3rd-party tools such as VNC and its variants, NetOP, Dameware and others, Remote Desktop Connection (also known as RDC) is already built into 99% of Windows systems. Therefore, it is both free to use and provides you with many useful features that are directly related to Terminal Services. It's easy to configure, only requiring the click of a mouse. Furthermore, it's pretty secure. In the most recent versions of Windows, it can be used easily over WAN links by deploying both regular TS-based encryption or connecting through a Terminal Server (Remote Desktop) Gateway by using SSL (similar to what's used when connecting your Outlook client to your Exchange servers with Outlook Anywhere - or RPC over HTTPs).

So, we've got the capability to remotely connect to our systems, but what tool shall we use for that task? The built-in RDC client - mstsc.exe - is all we need, and it's already installed by default on all modern versions of Windows. Updates for the client are being made available through Windows Update. However, the mstsc.exe client is limited in capability when you need to connect to many remote machines. In order to remember the proper credentials and settings for each connection, you'll need to create many shortcuts to many mstsc.exe instances, each with its settings and even saved credentials. This makes management of multiple connections a bit cumbersome.

I've used some 3rd-party tools that allow saving of multiple remote desktop session shortcuts and settings. However, most tools that were once freeware are no longer free, and others have grown into big, bulky and sometimes uncomfortable to use applications.

Enter Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Manager. Currently (as of June 2010) it's running version 2.2, and it's an uber-cool tool that you MUST use! RDCMan, as it's known for short, manages multiple remote desktop connections. It is useful for managing server labs where you need regular access to each machine. It is similar to the built-in MMC Remote Desktops snap-in, but much, much more flexible.

First, download it from here:

Remote Desktop Connection Manager
Download Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan)

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Server 2008 R2; Windows Vista

Users using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 will need to obtain version 6 or newer of the Remote Desktop Connection client software:

Download details: Remote Desktop Connection 7.0 client update for Windows Vista (KB969084)

Download details: Remote Desktop Connection 7.0 client update for Windows XP (KB969085)

(The Windows XP version requires Windows XP Service Pack 3)

After downloading, if you're running Windows XP (like I am in this example), make sure you've got RDC 7. If not, you need to install it from the above link.

This does not require a reboot.

Now we can install RDCMan.

Click Next and then Finish.

Now, run RDCMan from the Start menu.

First thing you want to do is to create a new connection file. Click on "File" > "New" and select the name and location of the file. You can later take this file from one computer to another.

Once the connection file is in place, create a new group by right-clicking on the connections icon and selecting "Add group".

Enter a name for the group. This name can later be changed.

What's nice about RDCMan is that the parent connection file can be configured with master properties such as logon credentials. Once configured, these settings are automatically inherited to the child objects, in this case to the group. The group then passes on these settings to the individual machines. In this case, I wanted to configure my group to have other credentials than the default ones. Therefore, I unselected "Inherit from parent" in the"Logon Credentials" tab and filled in my details.

Take a moment to look at the other tabs. We've got TS (or RD) Gateway settings, which allows you to connect to internal machines by using one externally available TS (or RD) Gateway.

We've got screen resolution settings:

We've got remote disk, printer, ports and clipboard settings. By default, only the clipboard is enabled.

And so on.

Next, add the machines you want to connect to. Right-click the group and select "Add server".

You can also import the server list from a text file.

Enter the server's name, IP, and any other setting you need which you do not want to be inherited from the parent group.

Once all servers are added, you can right-click a machine name and select "Connect server". You can also double-click it's thumbnail in the main pane.

The server's thumbnail is now updated and it shows a realtime image of what's seen on that server's desktop.

You can also connect to the entire group at once. Right-click the group name and select"Connect group".

Immediately, all machines are now connected.

You can double-click on a thumbnail to expand the connection, or even go into full-screen.

It turns out that the thumbnails are view-only, and can actually be clicked upon. See how I opened one of the server's Start menu by clicking on the miniaturized Start button.

When done, you can disconnect each machine, or the entire group at once.

Don't forget to save the connection file before closing RDCMan!

Cool!

WEB Key Crack Backtrack 4

HOW TO CRACK A WI-FI NETWORK'S WEP PASSWORD WITH BACKTRACK

 You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look. Today we're going to run down, step-by-step, how to crack a Wi-Fi network with WEP security turned on. But first, a word: Knowledge is power, but power doesn't mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn't make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise. Dozens of tutorials on how to crack WEP are already all over the internet using this method. Seriously—Google it. This ain't what you'd call "news." But what is surprising is that someone like me, with minimal networking experience, can get this done with free software and a cheap Wi-Fi adapter. Here's how it goes.

What You'll Need

Unless you're a computer security and networking ninja, chances are you don't have all the tools on hand to get this job done. Here's what you'll need:

1. A compatible wireless adapter—This is the biggest requirement. You'll need a wireless adapter that's capable of packet injection, and chances are the one in your computer is not. After consulting with my friendly neighborhood security expert, I purchased an Alfa AWUS050NH USB adapter, pictured here, and it set me back about $50 on Amazon. The guy in this video below is using a $12 model he bought on Ebay (and is even selling his router of choice). You won't go wrong with the Alfa, but do your research. There are plenty of resources on getting aircrack-compatible adapters out there.
2. A BackTrack 3 Live CD. We already took you on a full screenshot tour of how to install and use BackTrack 3, the Linux Live CD that lets you do all sorts of security testing and tasks. Download yourself a copy of the CD and burn it, or load it up in VMware to get started. (I tried the BackTrack 4 pre-release, and it didn't work as well as BT3. Do yourself a favor and stick with BackTrack 3 for now.)
3. A nearby WEP-enabled Wi-Fi network. The signal should be strong and ideally people are using it, connecting and disconnecting their devices from it. The more use it gets while you collect the data you need to run your crack, the better your chances of success.
4. Patience with the command line. This is an ten-step process that requires typing in long, arcane commands and waiting around for your Wi-Fi card to collect data in order to crack the password. Like the doctor said to the short person, be a little patient. 

Crack That WEP

To crack WEP, you'll need to launch Konsole, BackTrack's built-in command line. It's right there on the taskbar in the lower left corner, second button to the right. Now, the commands. First run the following to get a list of your network interfaces: 

airmon-ng

The only one I've got there is labeled ra0. Yours may be different; take note of the label and write it down. From here on in, substitute it in everywhere a command includes (interface). Now, run the following four commands. See the output that I got for them in the screenshot below. 

airmon-ng stop (interface)
ifconfig (interface) down
macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
airmon-ng start (interface)

 If you don't get the same results from these commands as pictured here, most likely your network adapter won't work with this particular crack. If you do, you've successfully "faked" a new MAC address on your network interface, 00:11:22:33:44:55.
Now it's time to pick your network. Run: 

airodump-ng (interface)

To see a list of wireless networks around you. When you see the one you want, hit Ctrl+C to stop the list. Highlight the row pertaining to the network of interest, and take note of two things: its BSSID and its channel (in the column labeled CH), as pictured below. Obviously the network you want to crack should have WEP encryption (in the ENC) column, not WPA or anything else.  Like I said, hit Ctrl+C to stop this listing. (I had to do this once or twice to find the network I was looking for.) Once you've got it, highlight the BSSID and copy it to your clipboard for reuse in the upcoming commands.
Now we're going to watch what's going on with that network you chose and capture that information to a file. Run: 

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (file name) --bssid (bssid) (interface)

Where (channel) is your network's channel, and (bssid) is the BSSID you just copied to clipboard. You can use the Shift+Insert key combination to paste it into the command. Enter anything descriptive for (file name). I chose "yoyo," which is the network's name I'm cracking. 

You'll get output like what's in the window in the background pictured below. Leave that one be. Open a new Konsole window in the foreground, and enter this command: 

aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface)

Here the ESSID is the access point's SSID name, which in my case is yoyo. What you want to get after this command is the reassuring "Association successful" message with that smiley face.  You're almost there. Now it's time for: 

aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)

Here we're creating router traffic to capture more throughput faster to speed up our crack. After a few minutes, that front window will start going crazy with read/write packets. (Also, I was unable to surf the web with the yoyo network on a separate computer while this was going on.) Here's the part where you might have to grab yourself a cup of coffee or take a walk. Basically you want to wait until enough data has been collected to run your crack. Watch the number in the "#Data" column—you want it to go above 10,000. (Pictured below it's only at 854.) Depending on the power of your network (mine is inexplicably low at -32 in that screenshot, even though the yoyo AP was in the same room as my adapter), this process could take some time. Wait until that #Data goes over 10k, though—because the crack won't work if it doesn't. In fact, you may need more than 10k, though that seems to be a working threshold for many. 

Once you've collected enough data, it's the moment of truth. Launch a third Konsole window and run the following to crack that data you've collected: 

aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (file name-01.cap)

Here the filename should be whatever you entered above for (file name). You can browse to your Home directory to see it; it's the one with .cap as the extension. If you didn't get enough data, aircrack will fail and tell you to try again with more. If it succeeds, it will look like this: The WEP key appears next to "KEY FOUND." Drop the colons and enter it to log onto the network.

Problems Along the Way

With this article I set out to prove that cracking WEP is a relatively "easy" process for someone determined and willing to get the hardware and software going. I still think that's true, but unlike the guy in the video below, I had several difficulties along the way. In fact, you'll notice that the last screenshot up there doesn't look like the others—it's because it's not mine. Even though the AP which I was cracking was my own and in the same room as my Alfa, the power reading on the signal was always around -30, and so the data collection was very slow, and BackTrack would consistently crash before it was complete. After about half a dozen attempts (and trying BackTrack on both my Mac and PC, as a live CD and a virtual machine), I still haven't captured enough data for aircrack to decrypt the key. So while this process is easy in theory, your mileage may vary depending on your hardware, proximity to the AP point, and the way the planets are aligned. Oh yeah, and if you're on deadline—Murphy's Law almost guarantees it won't work if you're on deadline. To see the video version of these exact instructions, check out this dude's YouTube video.

Install Backtrack 4

Forefront Installation

You can download Forefront Threat Management Gateway Beta 3 from here From the download page, you will notice that Forefront Threat Management Gateway Beta 3 is now available in two versions, Standard and Enterprise Edition. With TMG Beta 2, there was only one executable file.  In this article, I will be installing Forefront TMG Standard Edition (TMGBETA3_EN_SE_AMD64.exe) System Requirements: A computer with a 64-bit processor. Windows Server® 2008 64-bit operating system. You cannot install Forefront TMG on 32-bit versions of Windows Server 2008. Only Forefront TMG Management Console (MMC) can be installed on a 32bit machine, so that you can connect remotely using the MMC to the Forefront TMG Server. 4 gigabytes (GB) or more of memory One local hard disk partition that is formatted with the NTFS file system. 2.5 GB of available hard disk space. This is exclusive of hard disk space that you want to use for caching or for temporarily storing files during malware inspection. One network adapter that is compatible with the computer's operating system, for communication with the Internal network. An additional network adapter for each network connected to the Forefront TMG computer. Before installing TMG Beta 3, make sure to read the Release Notes for Forefront Threat Management Gateway Beta 3. Installing TMG Beta 3 I have already setup the server with two network cards. The first is called Internal NIC and is connected to the Internal Network, whereas the second network card is called External NIC and is connected to the ISP Router ( External Network ). Read this article to know more about how you can correctly configure your TMG Network cards : Configuring ISA Server Interface Settings I have downloaded Forefront Threat Management Gateway Standard Edition (TMGBETA3_EN_SE_AMD64.exe), and saved it on the Desktop. Double click on the setup file that you have downloaded, if you have User Account Control enabled, it will prompt you to take action, click onContinue On the Welcome to the Install Shield Wizard page, click on Next Select the path where the extracted files will be stored You can either keep the default path or change it to a custom path by clicking on the Change... button, browse and select another path. Then click Next extracting the setup package will start Once setup files extraction is completed, the main Forefront TMG menu page will open, where it is divided into three sections : Before you Start : This section helps you in identifying the hardware and software requirements, reading the deployment guide and the release notes for TMG beta 3. Prepare and Install : It allows you to run Windows Update and download/install Windows update. The Preparation Tool is a new tool introduced with Beta 3 and was not available with TMG Beta 2. It automatically checks what are all the required prerequisites/components and download/install them on your behalf. This is a great improvement to the installation wizard. Previously with Beta 2, you had to install all prerequisites manually and missing any of them would result in the failure of installing TMG Beta2.  The Install Forefront TMG option launches the preparation tools as well and then starts the installation of Forefront TMG. Additional options : Includes a link to Forefront TMG website, and also an option to install Forefront Security for Exchange (Beta 2). From the Prepare and Install section, you can: Run Windows Update and install the latest Windows Updates. In this step, you can install .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 which is considered to be one of the prerequisites that the preparation tool will check for. Although its not recommended, you can skip running windows update and run the Preparation Tool, it will check if the required components are already installed, if not yet installed, the preparation tool will try to download and install them, these prerequisites/components are : Windows Roles & Features Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Microsoft Windows Installer 4.5 Windows Web Services API  Or directly click on Install Forefront TMG, which will also will run the preparation tool and then gives you the options to install Forefront TMG (if no reboot is required after installing the components required by the preparation tool) Click on Install Forefront TMG, If you have User Account Control enabled, then you might receive the below message box, click Continue The Welcome to the Preparation Tool wizard page will open , click Next Accept the terms of the License Agreement(s) and click Next Select the first installation option, Install Forefront Threat Management Gateway service, and then click NextYou can choose the second option, if you already have installed Forefront TMG on another server, and now you want to install Forefront TMG remote management console to connect to the server remotely. The third option, Install Enterprise management Server, is grayed out, because we are installing Forefront TMG Standard Edition. If you are installing Forefront TMG Enterprise Edition, then this option will not be grayed out. The preparation tool will start checking what prerequisites are already installed on your machine, it will also try to download and then install/configure the required components. The preparation tool will start with the Windows Roles and Features, if any of these roles or features were installed previously then the preparation tool will start checking for next required components. My server has nothing installed on it except windows updates. The preparation tool will install and configure the following Windows Role and Features: Two Windows Roles: Six Windows Features:  The next required component is .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, but as I have already run Windows Update and installed the listed available Windows Updates ( one of these updates were .NET Framework 2.5 SP1 ), then .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 was found by the preparation tool to be already installed. Be informed that if .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is not installed, the preparation tool will try to download it and then install it, so make sure that your machine is able to connect to the internet.  If TMG machine is not connected to the internet at the time of installing TMG Beta 3, and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 was not installed previously, you will receive an error illustrating to you that the preparation tool was not able to download .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and to check your internet connection as shown below If your server is not connected to the internet at the time of installing TMG Beta 3, then make sure to download .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 from another machine, and then install it on the TMG Beta 3 server. You can download it from here. Then Windows Web Services API will be installed Then the preparation tool will check for Windows Installer 4.5, if it was not found to be installed, the preparation tool will download it from the internet and then start to install it Reminder : The Same error page you will receive if your server is not connected to the internet at the time of installation and you do not have Microsoft Windows Installer 4.5 installed. You can download it from here. Once the preparation tools finishes downloading and installing the required components, you might need to restart your machine to complete the installation. Click Restart to reboot your machine. Once the server is rebooted, resume TMG installation by running autorun.hta again and then click on Install Forefront TMG If you already had some or all of the required components and your server didn't require a reboot, then the preparation tool will display the completion result of checking all components, it will give you also the option to launch TMG setup. Click on Finish If you have User Account Control enabled, click on Continue Microsoft Forefront TMG Installer will start On the Welcome to the Installation Wizard page, click Next On the License Agreement page, accept the terms in the license agreement, and then click Next On the Customer Information page, enter your details , username and organization name, and as you notice, the product serial number is already filled as this is a beta build of the product. Then click Next On the Installation Path  page, as you will notice, the path is C:\Program Files\Microsoft ISA Server\ , I believe this will be changed to refer to Forefront TMG once the product is RTM. You can either keep the default installation path, or change it by clicking on the Change... button and browse to the custom path. then Click Next On the Internal Network page, specify the address range(s) you want to include in TMG Internal Network, click on the Add... button Click on Add Range, type the address range then click OK    If you have another Internal Network Address range, then click on Add Range again and repeat the above steps, else click on OK You will return back to the Internal Network page, if you need to change anything click on Change.., else click on Next to proceed with the installation wizard Few services will be restarted or stopped as shown on the Services Warning page, click Next On the Ready to Install page, click Install  Installing TMG will begin Eventually, Forefront TMG installation will be completed, you can enable the checkbox at the bottom of the page to invoke Forefront TMG management when the wizard closes. Click Finish Once you click Finish, a webpage will open, that includes some recommendations and information that you can follow. To Open Forefront TMG , click Start > All Programs > Microsoft Forefront TMG > Forefront TMG Management If you have User Account Control enabled, then click on Continue Forefront TMG management console will open, and the first thing that you will notice is the Getting Started Wizard, which I would like to cover in a future article. Start exploring Forefront TMG Beta 3 and enjoy it....  One last reminder is that although Forefront TMG Beta 3 is feature complete, it is still a Beta version, so do not install it in a production environment. Summary Forefront Threat Management Gateway Beta 3 installation is much easier than previous Beta versions. The Preparation Tool is a new tool included in the installation wizard that will automatically downloads and install any required component. Its is recommended to run the Windows Update option first before installing TMG, so that you install all critical required updates for your Windows, then either click on run the preparation tool or Install Forefront TMG option, which will also run the preparation tool to check for all required components, and will try to download and install any required component.