Since October 14th, 2025, Microsoft has disabled previews in Windows File Explorer, for at least all downloaded files from the Internet and stored on network shares. Attackers could capture NTLM hashes simply by viewing the preview. I had to smile. It’s as if Microsoft had read my blog post “Why Every Windows AD Should Be Kept Offline” earlier this month, where I discussed exactly this …Read more

At the end of 2025, there will be a small highlight and educational holiday: the 39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3) in Hamburg. From 27th to 30th December, you can find me at the CCH in Hamburg. . Looking forward, Yours, Tomas Jakobs https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html ↩︎ Read more

Simple: Install Linux! Okay, that might sound too blunt, Tomas, but it’s true: The last bare-metal Windows installation in the household, my dedicated “gaming machine”, has recently been reinstalled with GNU/Linux Debian. Microsoft’s passive-aggressive Windows 10 EOL threat doesn’t work on me, or at least not in intended way. I was surprised to find out that Steam games not …Read more

Today on public holiday (in Germany) I polished my Nautilus script collection and uploaded it to Codeberg. For everyone who enjoys automating recurring tasks such as OCR on PDFs, creating animated WebP images from a selection of pictures, or encoding videos in h.265. The script collection will be updated from time to time. I already have some nice ideas in mind, like posting a graphic directly to …Read more

Next Friday and Saturday (September, 19th + 20th 2025) you find me at the Kiel Open Source and Linux Days, also known as Kielux. As guest, I’ll be attending a few talks and workshops. Looking forward, Yours, Tomas Jakobs https://www.kielux.de/ ↩︎ Read more

A Bash script I’ve used for many years got some love recently and I’ve uploaded it to Codeberg. The HTTP Limiter is my answer to the bots, scrapers, and pentest tools that constantly hammer on my public facing hosts. Though “hammer” might actually be an understatement. What once seemed like constant background noise has now become the norm with noticeable consequences: Log …Read more

If you have an own PKI in your AD, you may stop reading and move on. Nothing to see here. My gut however tell me, many mid-sized companies don’t have one and are at the mercy of Alex Neff’s Python script. Wsuks positions itself as man-in-the-middle between a Windows Update Server (WSUS) and the various servers/clients. It spoofs the WSUS IP in the ARP table. Upon contact (default: …Read more

Security through obscurity is not working. This is not an allegation, it is a proven fact. Today’s proof has a particularly large impact on worldwide Microsoft Windows installations. The Windows Security Centre (WSC) API has been made to accept any program as an anti-virus solution. The WSC works as follows: If a manufacturer of an AV security solution wants to install his snakeoil, he/she …Read more

Yes, I have a passion for exotic languages. This time I experimented with Purebasic and wanted to see how quickly a robust, multi-threaded HTTP REST API could be created. Cross-platform for Linux, Windows and OS X, free of additional dependencies as a single-file binary behind a reverse proxy that takes care of everything with TLS and load balancing. The result is a complete skeleton framework …Read more

It feels like I’ve been getting more and more follower requests lately that I just have to turn down. Sometimes there are empty profiles, sometimes newly created ones, sometimes profiles with content, comments and followers, where I ask myself: Do you really want to stand in a context with these people? Just a few minutes ago, another friendly but firm rejection. Digital sanitation, so …Read more