$ /bin/cormier --tagline

I have been doing some work with security certifcates lately and had the chance to document the creation of PKCS12/PFX archives using command line tools without first having CSR/private key in a key store.

Most are familar with the following work flow of obtaining a security certificate…

• Generate Certificate Signing Request (CSR)
  • This generates a private key (sometimes out of interface scope)
• Submit CSR to Certificate Authority (CA) for certificate generation
  • Internal Windows CA - certsrv
  • Public CA like - GoDaddy
• Retrieve certificate bundle from CA
• Import into keystore used to create CSR
  • The private key lives here (sometimes with no interface to manage, Windows for example)
• Export PFX archive that includes certificate, private key, and CA certificate(s) protected with password
  • Include private key in the export

Voila! PFX Archive!

But… if you have the private key on a file system some where and not in a key store (Windows or Java), the work flow changes.

Note: Remeber to password protect any export of certificates with private keys with strong passwords

To bundle those together in a PKCS12/PFX archive file you can use OpenSSL command line tool, I am sure there are others. Available on all major flavors of Linux and installable other operating systems.

I have been performing a bit of localization lately on an Xcode project and was looking for a way to reduce human errors due to typos and other human errors.

The best method I found was to create a separate a simple Translation.swift file to storage all the i18n code. Here I extend the LocalizedStringKey struct with my own project based localized strings for easy access on the Xcode autocomplete menu.

The Windows domain feature for locking accounts can be a helpful feature against malicious attempts to guess a password via brute force.

The version of netlogon.dll that has tracing included is installed by default on all currently supported versions of Windows. To enable debug logging, set the debug flag that you want by using nltest.exe, the registry, or Group Policy.

Group Policy

You will have to adjust a few policy settings to get the DCs to audit logon events. This are usually set correctly, but it can be worth a check of the environment to make sure the DCs are get the proper audit settings.

Audit account logon events for domain accounts and Audit logon events for logons to the computer.

Events

The Event IDs we are most concerned with are under the Windows Logs > Security section of Event Viewer.

• 4624
• 4776

If you want to live capture a long session, maybe over the course of a couple of hours. You will want to perform this so that you can capture the traffic to multiple files, based on size or duration of time, this makes the results much easier for analysts to work with, transferring, etc.

I like to create a dedicated directory for the capture session. I usually place them in Capture or ProjectNameCapture directorv. Once the capture session is complete, you can select the interesting PCAP files out of the session and delete or archive the others.

Launch Wireshark application. Open Capture options, select the Output tab.