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Advanced Persistent threats are a hot security topic lately. According to Wikipedia, APT usually refers to a group, with both the capability and the intent to persistently and effectively target a specific entity. The term is commonly used to refer to cyber threats, in particular that of Internet-enabled espionage using a variety of intelligence gathering techniques to access sensitive information.
A modern attack performed by APT is the “Pass the Hash”. According to a whitepaper from Microsoft, while performing a PtH attack, an attacker obtains elevated read/write permission to privileged areas of volatile memory and file systems, which are normally only accessible by system-level processes on at least one computer. Second, the attacker attempts to increase access to other computers on the network by:

1. Stealing one or more authentication credentials (user name and password or password hash belonging to other accounts) from the compromised computer.
2. Reusing the stolen credentials to access other computer systems and services.
   This sequence is often repeated multiple times during an actual attack to progressively increase the level of access that an attacker has to an environment.

Returning to the subject of this post, while going through Microsoft’s community information, I gathered quite interesting resources regarding security tools and guidance.
Regarding free assessment tools from Microsoft, as well as protection software, there’s a really nice compilation on the “Irish IT Professional” technet blog. You get to know tools like Microsoft Security Compliance Manager, Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer and Microsoft Security Assessment Tool.
Regarding security tools for footprinting, internal auditing anf guidance, you should check out the Security Tools Community Edition page, on Microsoft’s Technet Wiki.
Finally, you might want to follow the Microsoft Security Blog.
Photo Credit: JustEvents via Compfight cc

While installing a third party software on my laptop running Microsoft Windows 8, the operating system informed me that it required to download and install the .NET Framework 3.5. After my consent, it failed to download the package to install. I thought nothing of it and left the task for later.

However, this began to be a recurring episode. Even the very .NET Framework setup program would fail. While installing Windows Live Essentials (I really love Live Writer), the error happened again:

The error code 0x800F0906 wasn’t something I knew about and the support link is an awful article which suggest an over the top work around.

So I tried some common sense and analogy. If you’re used to administering Windows 2008 Servers you should know that the Microsoft .NET 3.5 Framework is installed from the feature selection on the add/remove role operation for the Application Server. Windows 7 itself has features that are essential for system administration like Telnet, and yet you have to add them manually.

With these aspects in mind I went to the Windows 8 Start screen and typed “Features”. Afterwards I selected “Settings” in the search bar and the desired option appeared, called “Programs and Features”:

From the list, you just choose the .NET Framework 3.5 and choose to download from Windows Update:

Now just wait for the installation to complete:

I was all set to go. You should be too .

Today Microsoft announced a new set of tools to help you support modern and older versions of Internet Explorer.

The site makes available a scanning tool that, provided a URL, detects common coding practices that may cause compatibility problems or prevent your users from getting the best possible experience on a webpage rendered on IE. For instance, I ran the scanner on this blog and the report was as follows:

A common problem from supporting old versions of IE was detected. The scanner found that the blog webpage was currently rendering in a Compatibility Mode on Internet Explorer 9 and 10, due to the following tag:

<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible"
      content="ie=emulateie7">

Other “nice to have” issues were detected like a lack of responsive design and no Windows 8 features like a touch browsing interface or a live tile for the start screen.

After removing the compatibility tag, the common problems were all fixed.

Another interesting part of this site is that virtual machines are made available for both Mac and Linux developers to download and be able to test their Web applications on Internet Explorer, using various versions of the windows operating system and the browser:

Finally I leave you with the insights from two IT professionals about how challenging it is to develop web application given the number of browser and client devices that exist:

Modern IE Homepage: http://www.modern.ie/

For all the Microsoft Office enthusiasts, here are the top 10 compilations regarding last year:

• Your top 10 favorite Excel posts of 2012
• Your top 10 favorite Word posts of 2012
• Your top 10 favorite Outlook posts of 2012
• Your top 10 favorite PowerPoint posts of 2012

Enjoy!

A free guide is available on MSDN patterns & practices section, demonstrating how you can create from scratch a multi-tenant, software as a service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud.
This guide is the third release of the second volume in a series about Windows Azure. It demonstrates how you can create from scratch a multitenant, Software as a Service (SaaS) application to run in the cloud by using the latest versions of the Windows Azure tools and the increasing range of capabilities of Windows Azure.

The guide is intended for any architect, developer, or information technology (IT) professional who designs, builds, or operates applications and services that are appropriate for the cloud. It is primarily written for people who work with Windows-based systems. You should be familiar with the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio, ASP.NET, SQL Server and Microsoft Visual C#.
You can check ou the guide at this MSDN page.

This year's posts with the most views were the following:

• Sharepoint 2010: BCS Login failed for user "NT AUTHORITY\ANONYMOUS LOGON"
• Sharepoint 2010: create new list items using pure javascript
• Test open network ports using Powershell
• Google Drive on Ubuntu Linux
• Windows 8 activation error: DNS name does not exist
• Weblogic Server Unexpectedly Shuts Down

The Web is evolving in a way that it’s more accessible than ever before, through a growing number in kind of personal devices. One might navigate the Web from a PC or a touch enabled device. The challenge for web developers is to adapt the User Interface to each client device capabilities and support the features on an effective manner.
This is where to Bootstrap framework comes in. It was made to not only look and behave great in the latest desktop browsers, but in tablet and smartphone browsers as well.

Built at Twitter by @mdo and @fat, Bootstrap utilizes LESS CSS, is compiled via Node, and is managed through GitHub.
Along the same line, but with site creation using the new Windows 8 style, you might want to check out Metro UI CSS.
Metro UI CSS allows to create a Web site in the style of Windows 8 quickly and without distractions on routine tasks.
The great value added by this frameworks is that you get a great looking, responsive and adaptive UI that you can put on your own Web applications.
Twitter Bootstrap: site
Metro UI CSS: site