Oh blast, OK, https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/19667/why-you-should-set-sensible-defaults-ip-flood-zones was three days earlier. Sorry -.-
Posts made by YellowOnline
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RE: Fortunately, 0N0E is in the Atlantic and not in my back yard
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RE: Could you pass TDWTF citizenship test?
@Arantor said in Could you pass TDWTF citizenship test?:
...
- Juan's job wouldn't have been so bad if not for the ...
- rampart stupidity.
- rampant stupidity.
- rampamt stupidity.
- rampalt stupidity.
- Juan's job wouldn't have been so bad if not for the ...
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Fortunately, 0N0E is in the Atlantic and not in my back yard
Interesting read I wanted to share:
http://fusion.net/story/287592/internet-mapping-glitch-kansas-farm/
PS. 'Glitch' is not really correct in their title...
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RE: SysAdmins are not flawless... a.k.a. my biggest screw-up ever
@Matches I will remember that. In Powershell I can just do Throw "Test!". Porting C# to PoSh is usually very easy (because we're all .NET family...).
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RE: SysAdmins are not flawless... a.k.a. my biggest screw-up ever
@RaceProUK But there's no sense crying over every mistake.
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SysAdmins are not flawless... a.k.a. my biggest screw-up ever
I might not be a real programmer, but at least I am a better-than-average scripter. Well usually.
A customer hates to invest in IT, so he still has an Exchange 2003 running. Obviously he also doesn't want to invest in a backup solution. Who needs backups?
Well, we did this week after a power outage: one of the storage devices did not survive. Fortunately we did have backups, as I wrote a pretty decent script that takes care of backups. For about 500 VMs, every night, it does simplified the following:
- Check which VMs belong together (i.e. share a Netapp storage)
- Connect to the appropriate ESXes
- Take a snapshot of the VMs
- Take a NetApp snapshot
- Remove VM snapshots
- Disconnect from ESXes
The reason my script takes an ESX snapshot first instead of simply a Netapp snapshot is consistency. Surely databases - and Exchange is a database - don't like inconsistency.
This script worked perfectly when I made it in October. According to my logging, it still did. Until we restored the Exchange server and we got some strange behavior. Turns out none of my backups have a snapshot and thus none of my backups are consistent. A quick check learned that this is the case since... December.
I found the problem quite fast. I don't have my real source here at home, but in my improv-code you will see immediately what happened.
God kill me. I screwed up a lot of things by at one point wanting to test my Catch block and commenting out my command that takes snapshots (because I didn't want to execute that during the test). Every time the script runs, it happily goes into the Try block and doesn't encounter any problems there of course. On a closer look, it turned out that I did generate errors during the removal of the snapshots - and I catched those as well. But due to another logical fail (a Catch at that point no longer interrupts the script), my monitoring e-mails still happily made a note 'Huge success'.
Now goodbye while I go and kill myself.
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RE: Alphabetical order means ABKDE
@Arantor In Discourse times, $name would have been a great placeholder for Belgium.
I can't make jokes about Belgium right now though :'(
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Alphabetical order means ABKDE
Even if you don't understand German it's obvious what's wrong here (click 'Kontakt') and also why it happened.
I keep ranting about bad internationalization of websites and this is just another example why. Although there are some things in there i can't explain (there's twice, not in the screenshot, the Virgin Islands (Jungferninseln) and a strange occurrence of a variable $name).
(But for good news: since a few months, amazon.de can be set to English for the information that is not exclusively German.)
Edit: Good lord, I need to get used to this new forum software. Did anyone miss Discourse yet?
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RE: Passive-Agressive Uninstall
As a man you miss the bits you need a bidet for, although my American friends seems to have rediscovered the bidet as a way to clean their behind. You can use it for that aim of course, but originally it is for female hygiene.
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RE: Passive-Agressive Uninstall
I hope it was meant as a joke. I feel like lately I had to explain too many people (well, Americans mostly) what a woman needs a bidet for.
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RE: Passive-Agressive Uninstall
If you really wonder why: because it can't connect to most hosts that other applications and my own scripts can.
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RE: Passive-Agressive Uninstall
I actually took the time to write down why I don't like it, but I couldn't help to feel offended by the default reason. you could say it's smart psychology of course: because of this, he does get feedback. Nevertheless I'm sure most people just click through without even reading it.
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Passive-Agressive Uninstall
I expected "I don't like it" or "Does not work" but not this.
The second option is pretty insulting too actually. It seems they cannot imagine failure on their side.
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In Search of Lost Malicious E-Mails
OH NO MY COMPUTER IS INFECTED WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!
BILL
-----Original Message-----
From: hans.adenauer@contoso.de
Sent: Friday, December 4, 2015 09:17
To: bill.reed@acmecorp.com
Subject: InfectionDear Mr. Reed,
After scanning your e-mail we found spyware infections and cookies in it. Please scan your computer for malware.
Kind regards,
Hans Adenauer
System Engineer
Contoso"Multiple exclamation marks," Juan J. thought, shaking his head, "are a sure sign of a diseased mind." (*)
A quick check of Bill's computer showed it was as healthy as it could be, considering an old Java was installed - the corporate flagship wouldn't work with any version higher than 5u22. Juan asked Bill if he could take look at his Sent Items to see the malicious e-mail. He could, be the file was not to be seen.
"Perhaps it deleted itself automatically after being sent," offered Bill helpfully, "like those letters the Stasi used to use before the Wall fell."
If the e-mail can't be found at the sender, it might still be at the recipient.
Dear Mr. Adenauer,
I'm assuming you can't send an infected e-mail back to me, but could you by any chance send me the headers?
Kind regards,
Juan J.
System Engineer
Moo GmbHOnly 15 minutes later the headers arrived.
Dear Mr. J.,
Attached are the headers for that dangerous e-mail. Please let us remind you to take urgently care of cleaning that system from viri.
Kind regards,
Hans Adenauer
System Engineer
ContosoJuan wondered for a fraction of a second why they had to clean the system from men, but then realized that the plural of virus has always posed people with some trouble.
Unfortunately, everything in the headers looked normal. Juan thought that the infected e-mail might have been spoofed and actually came from a different source outside of his customer's network. Alas: the e-mail was legitimate. Then his eye fell on the subject line.
[code]Subject: [ACME Flagship App] Your invoice #548425 [/code]
This e-mail wasn't sent from Bill's computer, but from the Big App. This is an Oracle monster that thousands of people use. If this was really infected, that would be a serious disaster. But that system being infected is extremely unlikely, if only because the amount of calls he would have had by then would have been immense. And anyways: how could spyware and cookies come from a system that doesn't browse the internet?
Dear Mr. Adenauer,
Thank you for your swift reply. I cannot, however, find anything wrong on our side. Would it be possible to send me the original e-mail?
Kind regards,
Juan J.
System Engineer
Moo GmbHHans was, admittedly, fast. Another 15 minutes later the e-mail arrived.
Dear Mr. J.,
Here it is. Please be careful with it.
Kind regards,
Hans Adenauer
System Engineer
ContosoIt was, as expected, a legitimate e-mail from the corporate system. It contained a .zip with 3 PDF files. No spyware, no cookies. If so, it would have probably been blocked by the e-mail scanning appliances on both sides too, one would expect.
The word 'cookies' dawned on Juan. How could cookies be in an e-mail actually? Something was wrong here.
Dear Mr. Adenauer,
I really cannot find any trace of the malware you are referring too. Are you really sure this e-mail was infected and not another one?
Kind regards,
Juan J.
System Engineer
Moo GmbHThis time the reply took half an hour.
Dear Mr. J.,
Attached is a screenshot from our antivirus. We are disappointed that you seem to doubt our competence.
Kind regards,
Hans Adenauer
System Engineer
ContosoDear Mr. Adenauer,
Looking at that screenshot, I think you have confused the content of that e-mail with your own system. Please scan your computer for malware.
Kind regards,
Juan J.
System Engineer
Moo GmbHJuan didn't hear back from them.
In my series of corporate WTF moments: Confession: Proactive wiring, With love... from Exchange, The Voice Mail of Reason and the 'rampartly' classic Gone Phishing (but written by Lorne).
(*) We still miss you, Sir Terry :'(
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RE: How to search output with PowerShell
Replace your code with this:
[code]
$a = @(cmdkey /list:cached.site.com)
If ($a[3] -NotMatch '* None
*'){cmdkey /delete:cached.site.com}
[/code]Powershell is great by the way. I won't shed a tear for batch or VBS.
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RE: The Voice Mail of Reason
I'll admit that you see - or should I say 'hear' - more often voice-controlled menus these days, but assuming a random telephone is voice-controlled... 2015 is still a bit too early for that. Or I am getting old.
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RE: I love the Dutch translation of this forum... [:)]
Have you noticed when this was posted?
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The Voice Mail of Reason
After switching them over to VOIP, Juan J. expected some questions from the French office about their new telephone system. He wasn't surprised when the phone rang and a number +33 appeared.
C> "Hi, this is Céline from France. My phone tells me there's a new voice mail, but I don't know how to access it."
Of course, the field technician had forgotten to tell them their passwords.
J> "No problem, I'll tell you your password. Hold on."
Juan went to the website of PerfectPhone, a provider of VOIP services that didn't exactly live up to its name. On the website, as an authenticated user, you could easily call the personal page of a user, with all his or her settings, including the plain-text voice mail password. By changing the customer number in the URL, you could easily see (and change) the configuration of other users in other companies too by the way. Practical, but not-so-perfect from a security point of view.
In any case: Céline's high-complexity password was there.
J> "Céline, just use 1234 to get into your voice mail. But perhaps we should change it."
C> "No no, I'll just note it down somewhere so I can remember it. I'll hang up now to try it. I'll get in touch if it doesn't work"
It only took 1 minute to get back into touch.
C> "It doesn't work."
Weird. It should just work, like for all other users. Juan changed the code and hung up so she could give it another go.
RING
C> "It still doesn't work"
J> "Strange. I'll inform myself what can possible be wrong. I'll get back to you soon."After one hour of consulting colleagues who knew the system better and contacting PerfectPhone themselves, all baffled at the strange problem, the phone rang again.
C> "Juan? This is Céline. It works now. I found it out."
J> "Ah? I'm happy to hear. But what was different now?"
C> "You know, I just entered the password on the dialpad"
J> "... so... what exactly did you do before?"
C> "Well the voice mail talked to me. So I talked back."
In my series: Confession: Proactive wiring,With love... from Exchange and the 'rampartly' classic Gone Phishing
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RE: 💩 Shit I just heard in my office
That was not an awful song! It was avant-garde!
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RE: Censoring Smurfed!
14 hours later I'm still not sure of your question, so I'll put my usual cynical approach to the internet aside and presume you are not trolling. That's obviously a comic panel where I replaced the original text (which wasn't much different anyway, but in French). with your sentence.
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RE: Censoring Smurfed!
Once in a while I like to eat Belgium waffles. Sounds better than eating out belgium tacos I think...
Belgium the belgium belgiumers that belgium'ed all of the belgiumers!
■■■■■■ ■■ ■■■ ■■■■■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■ ■■■■?As a Belgian, I'd like to see the filter changed to smurf. Yes, they're Belgian - there's more than Hercules Poirot and football players to that country. Also, it's the only way that your second sentence would make sense.
[spoiler]And finally a reason to use Comic Sans.[/spoiler]
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With love... from Exchange
BING
An e-mail arrived in the support mailbox of a small country's Ministry of Lost Cases. A reminder that the services of a branch office are interrupted at night because of a neighbour's complaint that the servers make too much noise. Amazed that a very light sleeping individual can actually force the state to shut down servers overnight, Juan did not notice at first the looming disaster and continued the daily routine of trying to solve tickets faster than they were created. In vain.
BING
Someone replies to the previous e-mail: "OK".
"What a stupid reaction" he thought before it dawned on him. How come he gets the reply to that message anyway?
BING
Just from the size of the scroll bar it was clear that someone in the communications department made a mistake: BING a mail that had to be sent to a distribution list containing the whole organization had BING somehow been expanded and all of the addresses were BING in the To: field of the e-mail. Juan didn't count it, and there BING might be a limit to how many recipients Exchange allows, but in theory at least, this mail had been BING sent to 25 000 people. And they started to do the feared "reply to all".
BING
The next fifteen minutes Juan spent looking for the Exchange admin who was on lunch break. Meanwhile, the mailbox had already more than 100 replies, most of them people answering (to 20 000 people) "Hey, why do I get this e-mail?" or simply "Stop sending me this irrelevant mail!" and a support employee trying a well meant e-mail (to 20 000 people) "Stop replying. You are causing a snowball effect for the mail system!".
By the time the Exchange admin came around, there wasn't much Exchange 5.5 left. The system was before this sudden increase in load already running at its limits, or rather past those limits, as it handled more traffic and had more storage than could possible be imagined when 5.5 came out.
BING
Exchange crashed and in its fall somehow managed to drag SentMail, OCS and Lotus into the void. It took a lot of money and some Microsoft experts flown in from across the Atlantic to get the e-mail system running again in about three days.
But all's Well That Ends Well: a year later after this débacle, and the bad press that came with it, the organization would switch to Exchange 2010 and get a real Exchange Admin instead of a public servant who had once done a course on Windows NT.
Legend says that the brave support guy who sacrificed his mailbox for the common good meanwhile also got through all the OOF and NDR messages he received that day.
After Gone Phishing I decided to only send stuff in "Error'd" and write my own (true) stories, e.g. Confession: Proactive wiring). I'm happy if they entertain you long enough to eat a sandwich. And don't mention Hanzo.
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A Wonderful Workflow
Request: "Install a Windows 10 VM in place X".
Instead of waiting 3 more weeks or so to download the RTM version from MSDN, I have to install the latest Beta build. Reason: "We already told the customer it'll be a beta version".
The external line of place X is incredibly slow. It would take an estimated 3 days to download the ISO, thereby also making external traffic on that site nearly impossible for the customer.
I downloaded the file at my desk - 30 minutes - and FTP'd it over VPN to place X's FTP server. Unfortunately, the VPN also isn't very
trustworthyreliable, so I had to package the ISO in a multi-part compressed file and send it over in a way that I could redo parts that somehow failed. 10 hours and several CRC-errors later, the file was however on the remote site.But the FTP is in the DMZ, so there is no way for me to WinSCP the file to the ESX server. Solution: put an FTP client on a different machine in place X, download the file from the FTP server, and now use WinSCP to finally put the image on the ESX datastore.
Tomorrow I'll do the install itself. I'm curious what obstacles await me then...
sigh
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RE: Skype for Business needs magic
Well, the whole Lync thing is new for me. There's more to SIP/VoIP than I thought.
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Skype for Business needs magic
Skype for Business 2015 is so badly documented that having actual experience with magic is a prerequisite for the course.
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RE: What's in a name?
It was a forest dump including 15 domains, so there were lots of service accounts - and I did remove them because I'm a nice guy, but I must've overlooked that one ;)
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RE: What's in a name?
Well, it's not such an obscure product, at least in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronis . Perhaps it would've been clearer if it was called something like "TrueImage Mailer" or "BackupExec Mailer".
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RE: What's in a name?
See Onyx's reply: Human Resources was trying to identify (manually) an employee called "Acronis Mailer". Yes, I think your brain cells aren't up to speed yet
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What's in a name?
People these days tend to take unusual first names for their kids. And because I'm working in Germany, a last name like "Mailer" is not so strange. After giving HR a dump of AD a while ago, it was only by accident that I found out today they were trying to identify for days already in vain a certain person called "Mailer, Acronis".
Reminds me of the day the 2nd line help desk called me (3d line).
"This process is eating all of the system's resources! it stays at 98-99% and sometimes even hits 100%!"
"What's it called?"
"System Idle Process"(Granted, they weren't native English speakers)
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Efficient packaging with Amazon
I guess they couldn't find a smaller box than the monstrous 140x70x150cm box they send me for a 70x15x10 item...
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RE: .TOUPPER() or !.TOUPPER(), that's the question
There's a field 'UserFrist_Name' for that.
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.TOUPPER() or !.TOUPPER(), that's the question
Bumped into this beauty today that should convert uppercase to lowercase. Never mind the irony of the replace function itself.
[code]SET upper(substring(UserFirst_Name, 1,1)) + REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(substring(lower(UserFirst_Name), 2,9000), ' a', ' A'), ' b', ' B'), ' c', ' C'), ' d', ' D'), ' e', ' E'), ' f', ' F'), ' g', ' G'), ' h', ' H'), ' i', ' I'), ' j', ' J'), ' k', ' K'), ' l', ' L'), ' m', ' M'), ' n', ' N'), ' o', ' O'), ' p', ' P'), ' q', ' Q'), ' r', ' R'), ' s', ' S'), ' t', ' T'), ' u', ' U'), ' v', ' V'), ' w', ' W'), ' x', ' X'), ' y', ' Y'), ' z', ' Z') end[/code]
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RE: Rant about your users here
About 28°C here in Berlin outside. 32°C inside -.-
(sorry, I replied as a non-German)
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RE: Rant about your users here
Every day I learn unexpected things that might, someday, come in handy.
Male hedgehogs also have an internal penis, that extends from the sheath when they are excited. This is a long slim often mottled in color appendage that can be quite startling to people who aren't aware of what they are seeing
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RE: Rant about your users here
I'll admit it was a bit ambiguous. As if I would dare to complain about users here! Added the comma to be on the safe side.
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Rant about your users here
We don't have such a thread yet, don't we?
I got an e-mail today of a very angry user complaining she couldn't send an e-mail with an attachment and she demanded to know why.
[code]Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:
a.friend@remote.server
Your message wasn't delivered because of security policies. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.The following organization rejected your message: mail.remote.server.
Diagnostic information for administrators:
Generating server: remote.server
a.friend@remote.server
mail.remote.server #550 5.7.0 Message Size Violation ##[/code]Turns out she tried to send a movie to a friend in another organisation. It wasn't even blocked by our mailserver (which is also a WTF, but I'm innocent about it) but by the remote server.
Sending movies via e-mail... weary shaking of head
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RE: Confession: Proactive wiring
Wha't's so s'trange abou't 'tha't? Isn't a 't always preceded with a quo'te?
Reminds me of ejective fricatives in Khosian languages.
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Learning scripting the hard way
Come on l33t programmers: have your laughs that I spent most of my days scripting Powershell.
...
OK, now we've had that, we can continue. A nice thing about scripting is that you do not need to compile but can give your commands directly in the shell. Obviously, this is a trial and error process. Jakub Jares, a Czech Powershell MVP, had this great idea to make you think twice before entering a command:
[code]$ExecutionContext.InvokeCommand.CommandNotFoundAction = { Stop-Computer -Force }[/code]
Changing this value of the system variable will force reboot your computer if you dare to enter the wrong command. That'll teach you for not using tab-completion!
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RE: Steam "Support"
I still think that some people saw antisemitism there - or at least shock value - where there wasn't any. Because they sold that T-shirt in Germany and Israel - two countries very sensitive to the theme - without much ado until the Reddit army saw similarities, I feel that few people really found it so reminiscent of the holocaust until the internet forced them to. As I child I also played cowboy with a striped shirt and a yellow star. Very sure I wasn't subtily making fun of the concentration camps as a six-year old.
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RE: Steam "Support"
Make that yellow pentagrams on their chest and I think you will be sued soon ^^
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RE: Steam "Support"
Well, I'm playing "Sniper Elite III" right now, which is the first WW2 game I play since I moved to Germany. I was wondering if my version would be censored in any way. Admittedly, I haven't seen any swastikas yet, but on the other hand: I bought my version in another country (Belgium).
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RE: Steam "Support"
Am I the only one who does not understand "international version" <-> "your region"? Which country on this planet is not part of "international"? That sounds quite a bit oxymoronic.
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Don't be an idiot, $env:username
While looking for a way to script user creation on a filezilla server, I stumbled upon this.
[code]#Generate a form to capture the new password and perform some rudimentary validation
$ftpPassword = formCaptureText $formTitle "Please enter the new (strong) password below:"
while (($ftpPassword.Length -lt 8) -or ($ftpPassword -eq $ftpUsername) -or ($ftpPassword -match "123"))
{
if ($ftpPassword -eq ""){write-host "Empty password. Exiting now";exit} #If password is empty, quit.
$ftpPassword = formCaptureText $formTitle "Don't be an idiot, $env:username. Enter a proper /strong/ password below. You can generate them at http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/:"
}[/code]I
shouldadded a case for the infamous "hunter2" password.
[code]
#PASSWORD
$ftpPassword = formCaptureText $formTitle "Please enter the new (strong) password below:"
While (($ftpPassword.Length -LT 8) -Or ($ftpPassword -EQ $ftpUsername) -Or ($ftpPassword -Match "123") -Or ($ftpPassword -Match "hunter2"))
{
If ($ftpPassword -EQ "")
{
Write-Host "Empty password. Exiting now"
Exit
}
$ftpPassword = formCaptureText $formTitle "Don't be an idiot, $env:username. Enter a proper /strong/ password below. You can generate them at http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/."
}[/code] -
RE: Virus over steam. Let's take a look.
In hindsight this sounds pretty stupid. But yeah. Older and wiser now. And much more games (300?).