Category: Security

Verifying File Hashes with PowerShell

I recently wanted to verify the hash of a file, named setup.exe, that was provided in a GnuPG signature file, named setup.txt. I used the PowerShell code below to verify the expected SHA-256 hash contained within the setup.txt file against the actual hash of the setup.exe file. You can use this script by modifying the …

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Administering Team Foundation Service (on the web, not on-premise)

If you are using Team Foundation Service (i.e. in the cloud, not our on-premise Team Foundation Server), finding the administration pages from the web site can be a bit tricky if you don’t know where to look. Log into your TFS account.  If you don’t have one, you can sign up at http://tfs.visualstudio.com.  In the upper-right corner …

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Query Your BitLocker ID and Password

I could not boot my laptop today because I was prompted for my BitLocker Recovery Key and did not have the associated .txt or .bek files.  So, fortunately, I was able to call our help desk and have them provide me with the password.  I could then boot my system,  Whew! Once I was back …

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File Hashing Is Built Into Windows

Note: This post was updated on 08/08/2021 to include instructions for PowerShell. I always used to download the md5sum.exe and sha1sum.exe files when I needed to generate a file’s hash in Windows. I just discovered that certutil.exe, included with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (and later), will do this for you (I’m not …

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