Protect Your Windows Network: From Perimeter to Data

The CD has a few tools that we wrote, partially because we needed a break from writing chapters, and partially because we thought they would be fun to write. Hopefully you will find some of these useful:

• A HOSTS file a friend of ours gave us to black hole many spyware sites. It simply maps all their DNS names to localhost thus preventing the machine from accessing them. Just copy it into %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc to use it. You can get an even bigger one at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002, and we recommend you update your HOSTS file from there every week or so.

• A password generator. Passgen is an enterprise-class, command-line password manager. We discuss it more in Chapter 11, "Passwords and Other Authentication MechanismsThe Last Line of Defense," and Chapter 8, "Security Dependencies." Also look at the readme for more information.

• An SQL script to revoke all permissions from the public login. Use with care, but it is fun to see how much public has access to. You use it by pasting it into a Query Analyzer window. It will generate another query as output. If you copy and paste the output into another Query Analyzer window and run it, all the public permissions are revoked .

• A slipstreaming tool. Like passgen, it is another custom tool developed specifically for the book. This VBScript is used to create on-disk operating system installations that already have all the patches appliedwhich turns out to be an involved process if you do it by hand. Instead, run the slipstream script, tell it where the source files are, where the patches are, and which service pack and operating system you are building; it will automatically build an on-disk install that has all the patches. We wrote this in VBScript because we figured it would be small and short. 1,100 lines of code later, we simply were not interested in rewriting it in a cooler and more efficient language.

We hope you will find these tools useful. They are licensed for your use within the organization that pays for the book. Please respect intellectual property rights and do not spread them around. Likewise, if you receive a copy of one of these tools from somewhere other than the CD, do not run it until you verify its authenticity. The SHA-1 hash of the slipstream tool is ddcf0bbaa4f09319f0d804df79ae60692748dbc9, and the one of the passgen tool is a10baed3102b2183569077a3fbe18113a658ed5d. If you get a copy of either tool with a different SHA-1 hash, do not use it! Instead, send us an e-mail at ProtectYourNetwork@hotmail.com, and we will get you a legitimate copy.