Category Archives: Technology
Getting Squid (Internet Proxy) Working
Problem After configuring Safari and Firefox to use my local network’s squid proxy, I got the following error whenever I tried to browse to a page: ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to retrieve the URL: … Continue reading
The Demise of CAPICOM
CAPICOM, a COM-based wrapper for the CryptoAPI library, is deprecated and on its way out. However, Microsoft has no time line for phasing it out, nor have they provided sufficient documentation of alternatives. Many CAPICOM pages contain a confusing, bright-red … Continue reading
Posted in Authenticode, COM, Cryptography, Technology, Win32
Tagged Authenticode, CAPICOM, code signing
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Unable to Connect to Localhost SQL Server Express Instance
Problem Connecting programmatically or by using osql failed with the following, generic error: error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server My programmatic attempt looked like this: string cs = “Data Source=localhost;” + “Trusted_Connection=true;” + “Initial Catalog=dbname;”; … Continue reading
Posted in ASP.Net, Technology
Tagged ADO, ASP.Net, c++, SQL Server, SQL Server Express
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GnuPG Plugin for vim Under Cygwin
GnuPG, GNU Privacy Guard, is a free system for encrypting files, emails, etc. The GnuPG plugin for vim provides automatic encryption and decryption of files within vim. If you attempt to edit a GnuPG-encrypted file with vim, it will prompt … Continue reading
Posted in Cryptography, Technology, Win32
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My Fantastic Contraptions
A collection of solutions for Fantastic Contraption: My Solutions: Tube – a minimal tube crawler. U-Turn – a floppy, crawling chariot. U-Turn (again)) – a simple cart which uses leverage to apply force on the ceiling. Back and Forth – … Continue reading
Posted in Fun, Internet
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Neat Flash Games for Nerds
These three games present interesting logic puzzles: Fantastic Contraption – build a machine to get an item into the target zone. Light-bot – provide simple commands to make your robot traverse obstacles (publisher site with annoying, talking banner ads is … Continue reading
Color Test
I just took a fun test to determine how good I am at discriminating colors. Lower values are better. My results: Your score: 8 Gender: Male Age range: 30-39 Best score for your gender and age range: 0 Highest score … Continue reading
Posted in Internet
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Stripping an Authenticode Signature
We needed to modify the resources of an installer and then apply an Authenticode signature. Unfortunately, it already had a signature on it, and modifying the resources of an executable with a signature results in a corrupted signature. The Microsoft … Continue reading
Posted in Authenticode, Technology
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Using Certificates and Signtool
Obtain a Software Publisher Certificate Your Certificate Authority will supply one of the following: a Personal Information Exchange (.pfx) file a Software Publisher Certificate (.spc), and a Private Key (.pvk) file a CER-encoded X.509 Certificate (.cer), and a Private Key … Continue reading
Posted in Cryptography, Technology
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PE Format
While investigating Authenticode, I become curious about the Portable Executable format. This is the file format used by all Windows executables. Here is a good overview in the context of .Net. And here is the referenced image which is missing … Continue reading