Category: Microsoft

How To Install Kimai Time Tracking App in Docker

In this guide, I’ll show you how to deploy the open source time tracking app Kimai in a Docker container. Kimai is free, browser-based (so it’ll work on mobile devices), and is extremely flexible for just about every use case.

It has a stopwatch feature where you can start/stop/pause a worklog timer. Then, it accumulates the total into daily, weekly, monthly or yearly reports, which can be exported or printed as invoices.

It supports single or multi users, so you can even track time for your entire department. All statistics are visible on a beautiful dashboard, which makes historical time-tracking a breeze.

Why use Kimai Time Tracker?

For my scenario, I am salaried at work. However, since I’m an IT Manager, I often find myself working after hours or on weekends to patch servers, reboot systems, or perform system and infrastructure upgrades. Normally, I use a pen and paper or a notetaking app to track overtime, although this is pretty inefficent. Sometimes I forget when I started or stopped, or if I’ve written down the time on a notepade at home, I can’t view that time at work.

And when it comes to managing a team of others who also perform after hours maintenance, it becomes even harder to track their total overtime hours.

Over the past few weeks, I stumbled across Kimai and really love all the features. Especially when I can spin it up in a docker or docker compose container!

If you don’t have Docker installed, follow this guide: https://smarthomepursuits.com/how-to-install-docker-ubuntu/

If you don’t have Docker-Compose installed, follow this guide: https://smarthomepursuits.com/how-to-install-portainer-with-docker-in-ubuntu-20-04/

In this tutorial, we will be installing Kimai for 1 user using standard Docker run commands. Other users can be added from the webui after initial setup.

Step 1: SSH into your Docker Host

Open Putty and SSH into your server that is running docker and docker compose.

Step 2: Create Kimai Database container

Enter the command below to create a new database to use with Kimai. You can copy and paste into Putty by right-clicking after copy, or CTRL+SHIFT+V into other ssh clients.

sudo docker run --rm --name kimai-mysql \
    -e MYSQL_DATABASE=kimai \
    -e MYSQL_USER=kimai \
    -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=kimai \
    -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=kimai \
    -p 3399:3306 -d mysql

Step 3: Start Kimai

Next, start the Kimai container using the already created database. If you look at the Kimai github page, you’ll notice that this isn’t the same command as what shows there.

Here’s the original command (which I’m not using):

docker run --rm --name kimai-test -ti -p 8001:8001 -e DATABASE_URL=mysql://kimai:kimai@${HOSTNAME}:3399/kimai kimai/kimai2:apache

And here’s my command. I had to explicitly add TRUSTED_HOSTS, the ADMINMAIL and ADMINPASS, and change the ${HOSTNAME} to the IP address of your docker host. Otherwise, I wasn’t able to access Kimai from other computers on my local network.

  • Green = change port here if already in use
  • Red = Add the IP address of your docker host
  • Orange = Manually specifying the admin email and password. This is what you’ll use to log in with.
  • Blue = Change to docker host IP address
sudo docker run --rm --name kimai -ti -p 8001:8001 -e TRUSTED_HOSTS=192.168.68.141,localhost,127.0.0.1 -e ADMINMAIL=example@gmail.com -e ADMINPASS=8charpassword -e DATABASE_URL=mysql://kimai:kimai@192.168.68.141:3399/kimai kimai/kimai2:apache

Note that 8 characters is the minimum for the password.

Step 4: Log In via Web Browser

Next, Kimai should now be running!

To check, you can go to your http://dockerIP:8001 in a web browser (192.168.68.141:8001)

Then simply log in with the credentials you created.

Step 5: Basic Setup

This app is extremely powerful and customizeable, so I won’t be going over all the available options since everyone has different needs.

Like I mentioned earlier, I’m using Kimai for overtime tracking only, so the first step for me is to create a new “customer”.

Create a Customer

This is sort of unintuitive, but you need to create a customer before you can start tracking time to a project. I’m creating a generic “Employee” customer.

Click Customers on the left sidebar, then click the + button in the top right corner.

Create A Project

Click Projects on the left sidebar:

Then click the + button in the top right corner.

Add a name, choose the customer you just created, and then choose a date range.

Create An Activity

Click Activity on the left, then create an activity. I’m calling mine Overtime Worked and assigning it to the Project “Overtime 2021” I just created.

Step 6: Change “Timetracking Mode” to Time-clock

Click Settings. Under Timetracking mode, change it to Time-Clock. This will let you click the Play button to start/stop time worked vs having to manually enter start and stop times.

Step 7: Start Tracking Time!

To start tracking time, simply click the timer widget in the top right corner.

A screen will pop up asking you what project and activity you want to apply the time to.

The selfhosted stopwatch will start tracking time right after. You can then view the timesheets for yourself under the My Times section or for all users under the Timesheets or Reporting tabs.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully this guide helped you get Kimai installed and setup! If you have any questions, feel free to let me know in the comments below and I’ll do my best to help you out.

My Homelab Equipment

Here is some of the gear I use in my Homelab. I highly recommend each of them.

The full list of server components I use can be found on my Equipment List page.

Source :
https://smarthomepursuits.com/how-to-install-kimai-time-tracking-app-in-docker/

Set Chrome as Default Browser using GPO

In this guide, I’m going to show you how to make Google Chrome the default browser using Group Policy (GPO). This guide applies to Windows Server 2012,2016,2019, 2022 as well as Windows 8/10/11.

To do this, there are several steps you’ll need to do. It’s not as simple as just creating a GPO and applying it to a target computer.

This guide assumes you’ve already implemented Google Chrome Enterprise and are already managing Google Chrome browsers at an enterprise level. If not, follow step 1 first.

Step 1: (Optional) Import Google Chrome .ADMX Template Files

Before you begin to manage settings and policies for your Google Chrome browser, you first need to download the .admx and .adml files from here: https://chromeenterprise.google/browser/for-your-enterprise/

Extract it once download and expand the subfolder Configuration.

  1. In the “adm” folder, find your language (en-US) and copy the chrome.adm file to your desktop.
  2. In the admx folder, find your language again (en-US), and copy the chrome.adml file to your desktop.

Next, RDP to your Domain Controller. Copy those two extracted files to the desktop of your DC.

  1. Browse to C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions and drag the chrome.admx.
  2. In C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US\folder, drag the chrome.adml file.

Now that you’ve copied in the necessary Group Policy files to manage your Google Chrome browsers, install Chrome Enterprise from here.

I used PDQ Deploy to push this out to all computers, but for testing you can simply install it on your PC.

Step 2: Create a new Group Policy Object

Log into your Domain Controller and open Group Policy Management. Right-click Group Policy Objects > New. Give it a helpful name like “Chrome Default Browser”.

Right-click the new policy > Edit. Then expand Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Google > Google Chrome. Double-click that and switch to Enabled.

You’ll notice in the Help section of the GPO that this will only work for Windows 7. For Windows 8-10, you will need to define a file associates XML file.

Step 3: Deploy File Associations File

The next step is to download a “default file associations” sample file, place it on a network share, and then configure another group policy.

Download the sample file from here: https://smarthomepursuits.com/download/5801/

You can either place the file in a network share available by everyone. Or, you could also use Powershell or PDQ Deploy/SCCM to push this file to a certain location on everyone’s computer.

For this example, I put the file in a network share like this: \\server01\fileshare01\chromedefault.xml

Step 4: Edit Chrome Browser GPO to include path to XML

Next, open up Group Policy Management from your DC again. Edit your new “Chrome Default Browser” policy.

Navigate to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > File Explorer.

Locate the “Set a default associations configuration file” policy. Edit it, and use the path from step 3.

Click Apply and OK once complete.

Step 5: Update GPO and Test

Next, you need to apply this GPO to a target OU or computer. I always recommend moving a test computer from Active Directory Users & Computers into a test OU to prevent breaking any production systems.

Locate the OU > right-click > Link an existing GPO > Choose the new “Chrome Default Browser” GPO.

Once the computer has been moved into the test OU, and you’ve applied the policy to that same OU, run the following command on the command to update the policy:

gpupdate /force

Then, sign out. The default browser will not be switched until after you log out.

To confirm it’s working properly, search Windows for “Default Apps” on your computer and switch it to Edge. Then, sign out and sign back in. If all goes well – you can open Default Apps again and successfully see that it has switched your default web browser to Google Chrome!

Wrapping Up

Hopefully this guide helped you force change the default web browser to Google Chrome for your company!

Source :
https://smarthomepursuits.com/set-chrome-as-default-browser-using-gpo/

Find Computers Recently Joined To Active Directory

If you’ve been looking for a Powershell script to find the most recent computers that have been joined to your Active Directory domain, then you’re in luck.

This Powershell script is super simple and is only a few lines of code long. I’ve also paired it with my Next In Line Computer Name Script. We have a standard naming convention when joining computer objects to the domain: company abbreviations, then append a number.

When this script runs, it will output computers that have been joined to the domain within the last 30 days. You can of course change the number to anything you like.

Powershell Script To Filter by Join Date / When Computer Account Was Created

$Joined = [DateTime]::Today.AddDays(-30)
Get-ADComputer -Filter 'WhenCreated -ge $joined' -Properties whenCreated | Format-Table Name,whenCreated,distinguishedName -Autosize -Wrap

Here’s what the output looks like:

If you have the same naming convention we do, then you could obviously just look at the last joined object and create xxxxxxx745 as the next object. However, if you’d like to take it a step further and have it display a box that visually tells you which computer name to use, then follow this guide. (It’s as simple as creating a text file called number.txt and adding the number of the last computer object you joined to the domain.)

If you’ve set that up, then here is the script you could use instead. On the last line, just append your computer prefix in place of the xxxx’s.

[void][Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.VisualBasic')

$NotifyUser = {
    [Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction]::MsgBox(
        ($args -join ' '), #Notification
        [Microsoft.VisualBasic.MsgBoxStyle]::Information,
        "Next Available Computer Object" #TitleBar
    )
}

[int](get-content "\\fileshare\IT\Scripts\New Hire-Computer\number.txt") + 1 | out-file "\\fileshare\IT\Scripts\New Hire-Computer\number.txt"
$Value = Get-content "\\fileshare\IT\Scripts\New Hire-Computer\number.txt"
$recently = [DateTime]::Today.AddDays(-30)
Write-Host -BackgroundColor Magenta Computers joined to the domain within last 30 days:
Get-ADComputer -Filter 'WhenCreated -ge $recently' -Properties whenCreated | Format-Table Name,whenCreated -Autosize -Wrap

&$NotifyUser Use Computer Name: xxxxxxx$Value

My Homelab Equipment

Here is some of the gear I use in my Homelab. I highly recommend each of them.

The full list of server components I use can be found on my Equipment List page.

Source :
https://smarthomepursuits.com/find-computers-recently-joined-to-active-directory/

Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) Definitions and Usage

CISA currently uses Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) according to the FIRST Standard Definitions and Usage Guidance — TLP Version 2.0. Note: On Nov. 1, 2022, CISA officially adopted TLP 2.0; however, CISA’s Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) capability will not update from TLP 1.0 to TLP 2.0 until March 2023. This exception includes AIS’s use of the following open standards: the Structured Threat Information Expression (STIX™) for cyber threat indicators and defensive measures information and the Trusted Automated Exchange of Intelligence Information (TAXII™) for machine-to-machine communications.

In addition to the FIRST TLP 2.0 webpage, see CISA’s:

Collapse All Sections

What is TLP?

The Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) was created in order to facilitate greater sharing of information. TLP is a set of designations used to ensure that sensitive information is shared with the appropriate audience. It employs five official marking options to indicate expected sharing boundaries to be applied by the recipient(s). TLP only has five marking options; any designations not listed in this standard are not considered valid by FIRST.

TLP provides a simple and intuitive schema for indicating when and how sensitive information can be shared, facilitating more frequent and effective collaboration. TLP is not a “control marking” or classification scheme. TLP was not designed to handle licensing terms, handling and encryption rules, and restrictions on action or instrumentation of information. TLP labels and their definitions are not intended to have any effect on freedom of information or “sunshine” laws in any jurisdiction.

TLP is optimized for ease of adoption, human readability and person-to-person sharing; it may be used in automated sharing exchanges, but is not optimized for that use.

TLP is distinct from the Chatham House Rule (when a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.), but may be used in conjunction if it is deemed appropriate by participants in an information exchange.

The source is responsible for ensuring that recipients of TLP information understand and can follow TLP sharing guidance.

If a recipient needs to share the information more widely than indicated by the original TLP designation, they must obtain explicit permission from the original source.

How do I determine appropriate TLP designation?

ColorWhen should it be used?How may it be shared?
 TLP:RED 
TLP:RED
Not for disclosure, restricted to participants only.		Sources may use TLP:RED when information cannot be effectively acted upon without significant risk for the privacy, reputation, or operations of the organizations involved. For the eyes and ears of individual recipients only, no further.Recipients may not share TLP:RED information with any parties outside of the specific exchange, meeting, or conversation in which it was originally disclosed. In the context of a meeting, for example, TLP:RED information is limited to those present at the meeting. In most circumstances, TLP:RED should be exchanged verbally or in person.
 TLP:AMBER+STRICT 
TLP:AMBER
Limited disclosure, restricted to participants’ organization.		Sources may use TLP:AMBER+STRICT when information requires support to be effectively acted upon, yet carries risk to privacy, reputation, or operations if shared outside of the organization.Recipients may share TLP:AMBER+STRICT information only with members of their own organization on a need-to-know basis to protect their organization and prevent further harm.
 TLP:AMBER 
TLP:AMBER
Limited disclosure, restricted to participants’ organization and its clients (see Terminology Definitions).		Sources may use TLP:AMBER when information requires support to be effectively acted upon, yet carries risk to privacy, reputation, or operations if shared outside of the organizations involved. Note that TLP:AMBER+STRICT should be used to restrict sharing to the recipient organization only. Recipients may share TLP:AMBER information with members of their own organization and its clients on a need-to-know basis to protect their organization and its clients and prevent further harm.
 TLP:GREEN 
TLP:GREEN
Limited disclosure, restricted to the community.		Sources may use TLP:GREEN when information is useful to increase awareness within their wider community.Recipients may share TLP:GREEN information with peers and partner organizations within their community, but not via publicly accessible channels. Unless otherwise specified, TLP:GREEN information may not be shared outside of the cybersecurity or cyber defense community.
 TLP:CLEAR 
TLP:WHITE
Disclosure is not limited.		Sources may use TLP:CLEAR when information carries minimal or no foreseeable risk of misuse, in accordance with applicable rules and procedures for public release.Recipients may share this information without restriction. Information is subject to standard copyright rules.

TLP 2.0 Terminology Definitions

Community

Under TLP, a community is a group who share common goals, practices, and informal trust relationships. A community can be as broad as all cybersecurity practitioners in a country (or in a sector or region).

Organization

Under TLP, an organization is a group who share a common affiliation by formal membership and are bound by common policies set by the organization. An organization can be as broad as all members of an information sharing organization, but rarely broader.

Clients

Under TLP, clients are those people or entities that receive cybersecurity services from an organization. Clients are by default included in TLP:AMBER so that the recipients may share information further downstream in order for clients to take action to protect themselves. For teams with national responsibility, this definition
includes stakeholders and constituents. Note: CISA considers “clients” to be stakeholders and constituents that have a legal agreement with CISA.

Usage

How to use TLP in email

TLP-designated email correspondence should indicate the TLP color of the information in the Subject line and in the body of the email, prior to the designated information itself. The TLP color must be in capital letters: TLP:RED, TLP:AMBER+STRICT, TLP:AMBER, TLP:GREEN, or TLP:WHITE.

How to use TLP in documents

TLP-designated documents should indicate the TLP color of the information in the header and footer of each page. To avoid confusion with existing control marking schemes, it is advisable to right-justify TLP designations. The TLP color should appear in capital letters and in 12 point type or greater. Note: TLP 2.0 has changed the color coding of TLP:RED to accomodate individuals with low vision.

RGB:
TLP:RED : R=255, G=43, B=43, background: R=0, G=0, B=0
TLP:AMBER : R=255, G=192, B=0, background: R=0, G=0, B=0
TLP:GREEN : R=51, G=255, B=0, background: R=0, G=0, B=0
TLP:WHITE : R=255, G=255, B=255, background: R=0, G=0, B=0

CMYK:
TLP:RED : C=0, M=83, Y=83, K=0, background: C=0, M=0, Y=0, K=100
TLP:AMBER : C=0, M=25, Y=100, K=0, background: C=0, M=0, Y=0, K=100
TLP:GREEN : C=79, M=0, Y=100, K=0, background: C=0, M=0, Y=0, K=100
TLP:WHITE : C=0, M=0, Y=0, K=0, background: C=0, M=0, Y=0, K=100

Source :
https://www.cisa.gov/tlp

Apply sensitivity labels to your files and email in Office

Excel for Microsoft 365 Word for Microsoft 365 Outlook for Microsoft 365 More…

Note: This feature requires a Microsoft 365 subscription and is available for users and organizations whose administrators have set up sensitivity labels. If you’re an administrator looking to get started with sensitivity labels see Get started with sensitivity labels.

You can apply sensitivity labels to your files and emails to keep them compliant with your organization’s information protection policies.

The names of these labels, the descriptions you see when you hover over them, and when to use each label will be customized for you by your organization. If you need additional information about which label to apply, and when, contact your organization’s IT department.

How are sensitivity labels applied?

Sensitivity labels are applied either manually or automatically.

Note: Even if your administrator has not configured automatic labeling, they may have configured your system to require a label on all Office files and emails, and may also have selected a default label as the starting point. If labels are required you won’t be able to save a Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file, or send an email in Outlook, without selecting a sensitivity label. 

To apply, change, or remove a label manually follow these steps:

Office 365Office 365 for MacOffice for AndroidOffice for iOSWeb

Outlook

  1. When composing an email, select Sensitivity.

    Sensitivity button in Outlook for the webImportant:  Sensitivity is not available if your Office account isn’t a work account, and if your administrator hasn’t configured any sensitivity labels and enabled the feature for you. 
  2. Choose the sensitivity label that applies to your email.

    Sensitivity button with sensitivity options in Outlook for the webNote: If your organization has configured a website to learn more about their sensitivity labels, you will also see a Learn More option.

To remove a sensitivity label that has already been applied to an email, unselect it from the Sensitivity menu. Naturally if your organization requires labels on all files you won’t be able to remove it.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint

  1. On the Home tab, select Sensitivity.

    Sensitivity button in Office on the webImportant:  Sensitivity is not available if your Office account isn’t a work account with a Office 365 Enterprise E3 or Office 365 Enterprise E5 license assigned, or if your administrator hasn’t configured any sensitivity labels and enabled the feature for you .
  2. Choose the sensitivity label that applies to your file.

    Sensitivity button and dropdown menu in Office on the webNote: If your organization has configured a website to learn more about their sensitivity labels, you will also see a Learn More option.

To remove a sensitivity label that has already been applied to a file, unselect it from the Sensitivity menu. Naturally if your organization requires labels on all files you won’t be able to remove it.

Automatically applied (or recommended) labels

If your administrator has set up automatic labeling then files or emails that contain certain kinds of information – such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, or other sensitive information – can have a specified label either recommended for, or applied, automatically. 

If a label has been applied automatically you’ll see a notification below the Office ribbon that looks like this.

Screenshot of a Policy Tip for an automatically applied sensitivity label

The notice for when a label has been recommended, but not automatically applied, looks similar.

For more information see Automatically apply or recommend sensitivity labels to your files and emails in Office 

How do I know what label is currently applied?

The way to see the currently applied label, if any, varies slightly depending upon whether you’re on desktop or mobile.

On desktop apps (including Office for the web) look at the status bar at the bottom of the window.

The Excel status bar showing a "General" sensitivity label has been applied

On the Office mobile apps, select the  Three dots icon  menu.

Outlook is a bit different

In Outlook nothing appears if no label has been selected or if you’re composing an email and only the default label is applied. 

If a label has been selected, however, you’ll see it on the InfoBar just above the To field.

A sensitivity label displayed in the InfoBar above the To field in an Outlook email message.

What happens when I apply a sensitivity label?

When you apply a sensitivity label, the label information will persist with your file or email, even as it is shared between devices, applications, and cloud services. Applying a sensitivity label may also result in changes to your file or email according to your organization’s configuration, such as:

  • Encryption with Information Rights Management may be applied to your file or email
  • A header or footer may appear in your file or email
  • A watermark may appear in your file

Note: If you don’t have permission to change or remove a sensitivity label, you’ll be prevented from doing so with an error message in most apps. In some apps, like Outlook mobile, the sensitivity labels will simply be disabled.

Not all apps on all platforms support the same behavior, so the exact results of applying a sensitivity label may vary slightly. For more information about what capabilities are supported on each platform see Support for sensitivity label capabilities in apps.

Justify changes to sensitivity label

Your administrator can have a policy that requires you to provide justification before changing a sensitivity label from a higher sensitivity to a lower sensitivity. In this configuration, you may be asked to choose a justification reason or provide your own when selecting a less sensitive label.

Note: You will only be asked to justify changes one time after opening a document or replying to forwarding an email message. After justifying once, subsequent changes will not require justification until that document or email message is closed and opened again.

The dialog box that appears when your organization requires you to provide a justification for changing a sensitivity label.

See also


Source :
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/apply-sensitivity-labels-to-your-files-and-email-in-office-2f96e7cd-d5a4-403b-8bd7-4cc636bae0f9#OfficeVersion=Web

How to capitalize or change the case of text in any app

Automatically convert the case of your text in Word, Excel, Google Docs, and more.

Capitalization isn’t something you have to think much about. The first letter of a sentence gets capitalized, along with any proper nouns—and you write in all caps when you’re angry (or excited, depending on who you ask).

Automatically convert text case in your workflows

Learn how

As long as you type with the capitalization you want, everything’s fine. But when you go to write a long title and have to hold Shift for every first letter or when you write a few sentences without realizing caps lock was on, capitalization can suddenly get more frustrating. It can take seemingly forever to edit each letter back to the case you want—and it’s so easy to miss the stray cApital letter in a long essay or blog post.

Here’s how to automatically capitalize text properly in Word, Google Docs, and other text editors—and in thousands of other apps using Zapier’s Formatter tool.

How to change case in Word

If you’re working in Microsoft Word, it’s easy to change the capitalization or case of text in your document.

  1. Select your text.
  2. In the Home section of the toolbar, click the Change Caseoption. (It’s right next to your font options: a capital and lowercase Aa with a dropdown arrow.)
  3. Select the case you want.

Your options are: Sentence case., lowercase, UPPERCASE, Capitalize Each Word, or tOGGLE cASE to swap your writing’s current case—perfect for the times you swap capital and lowercase accidentally.

Changing the text case in Microsoft Word

Or you can highlight the text and use Word’s keyboard shortcut—Shift + fn + F3—to change selected text between lowercase, UPPERCASE or Capitalizing Each Word.

How to change case in Excel

It’s a little more complicated in Excel—you’ll need to use a formula to get the job done.

  • To make text uppercase in Excel, use the formula =UPPER(A1:A99), where A1:A99 is the cell range you want to change.
  • To make text lowercase in Excel, use the formula =UPPER(A1:A99).
  • To make text Title Case in Excel, use the formula =PROPER(A1:A99).

In every case, you’ll need to put the formula in another cell, and the new text will show up in that cell or column.

Converting case in Excel

How to capitalize text in Google Docs

Google Docs also includes a capitalization tool, hidden in its menus.

  1. Select your text.
  2. Click Format > Text > Capitalization.
  3. Choose the case you want (lowercase, UPPERCASE, or Title Case).
Changing the capitalization in Google Docs

How to capitalize text on macOS

Change capitalization in TextEdit with the built-in macOS text transformations

Using a Mac? Lots of apps on your Mac already includes macOS’s built-in spelling and grammar checks along with text transformations.

In most Mac apps:

  1. Select the text, and right-click on it to see the text options.
  2. Hover over the Transformations menu.
  3. Select the case you want (the Capitalize option will capitalize the first letter of every word).
The capitalization options in Messages on a Mac

If you don’t see the options in the right-click menu, check the gear icon in the app’s font settings—that’s where Pages and other Apple apps put those same transformations.

How to capitalize text in Sublime Text

One of the most popular code and text editors Sublime Text also includes a capitalization tool.

  1. Select your text.
  2. Click Edit > Convert Case.
  3. Select the case you want.
Capitalize text in Sublime Text

In addition to the standard options, Sublime Text also includes snake_case (lowercase, with an underscore between each word) and kebab-case (lowercase, with a hyphen between each word).

How to convert case online

Convert Case

Another option is to use a web app to format your text. There are a number of simple web apps that can swap your case for you.

  • In TitleCase, type or paste in your text, and then choose the case you want to automatically convert your text to.
  • In Convert Case (pictured above), type or paste in your text, then choose each of the case options you want. It’ll give you your text in all of those cases for a quick way to pick what looks best.

Automatically convert text case with Zapier

These tips work great for changing your capitalization within an app, like if you want to convert caps to lowercase in an article you’re writing. But if you want to change capitalization as you send information from one app to the other, here’s how to automatically convert text case with Zapier.

Related reading:

This article was originally published in September 2017. The most recent update was in December 2022.

Source :
https://zapier.com/blog/capitalize-text/

The 12 Most Impactful Internet Outages

An internet outage can have major consequences for a digital business, especially when it happens during peak usage times and on holidays. Outages can lead to revenue loss, complaints, and customer churn. 

Of course, internet outages regularly impact companies across all verticals, including some of the largest internet companies in the world. And they can happen when you least expect them. 

Read on to learn about some of the most impactful internet outages to date and some steps you can take to keep your business out of harm’s way.

Historical Internet Outages You Need to Know About 

1. Amazon Web Services 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a major outage in December 2021, lasting for several hours. The outage impacted operations for many leading businesses, including Netflix, Disney, Spotify, DoorDash, and Venmo. 

Amazon blames the outage on an automation error causing multiple systems to act abnormally. The outage also prevented users from accessing some cloud services. 

This outage proved the largest and safest cloud providers are also susceptible to downtime.

2. Facebook 

Facebook as well suffered a major outage in 2021, leaving billions of users unable to access its services, including its main social network, Instagram, and WhatsApp. 

According to Facebook, the cause of the outage was a configuration change on its backbone routers responsible for transmitting traffic across its data centers. The outage lasted roughly six hours, an eternity for a social network.

3. Fastly 

Cloud service provider Fastly had its network go down in June 2021, taking down several sizeable global news websites, including the New York Times and CNN. It also impacted retailers like Target and Amazon, and several other organizations.

The outage resulted from a faulty software update, stemming from a misconfiguration, causing disruptions across multiple servers.  

4. British Airways 

British Airways experienced a massive IT failure in 2017 during one of the busiest travel weekends in the United Kingdom. 

This event created a nightmare scenario for the organization and its customers. Altogether, it grounded 672 flights and stranded tens of thousands of customers.

According to the company, the outage ensued when an engineer disconnected the data center’s power supply. A massive power surge came next, bringing the business’s network down in the process.

5. Google

Google had a major service outage in 2020. It only lasted about forty-five minutes, but it still impacted users worldwide. 

Services including Gmail, YouTube, and Google Calendar all crashed. So did Google Home apps. The outage also impacted third-party applications using Google for authentication.

The issue happened due to inadequate storage capacity for the company’s authentication services.

6.  Dyn

Undoubtedly, one of the biggest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in history occurred in 2016 against Dyn, which was a major backbone provider.

The attack occurred in three waves, overwhelming the company’s servers. As a result, many internet users were unable to access partnering platforms like Twitter, Spotify, and Netflix. 

7. Verizon Fios

Verizon had a major internet outage in January 2021, which disrupted tens of thousands of customers along the East Coast.

While the internet outage lasted only about an hour, Verizon experienced a sharp drop in traffic volume. Naturally, many customers complained about the loss of service. 

At first, the company reported the incident was the result of someone cutting fiber cables. However, it was unrelated and turned out to be a “software issue” during routine network maintenance activities. 

8. Microsoft 

Another major internet outage occurred at Microsoft when its Azure service went under in December 2021. Azure’s Active Directory service crashed for about ninety minutes. 

Compared to some other outages, this one was relatively small. Nonetheless, it prevented users from signing in to Microsoft services such as Office 365. Although applications remained online, users couldn’t access them, making this a major productivity killer for many organizations worldwide.

9. Comcast

There was an internet outage at Comcast in November 2021, which happened when its San Francisco backbone shut down for about two hours.

Following the outage, a broader issue occurred, spanning multiple U.S. cities, including hubs like Philadelphia and Chicago. Several thousand customers lost service, leaving them unable to access basic network functionality during the height of the pandemic. 

10. Akamai Edge DNS

Akamai, a global content delivery provider, experienced an outage with its DNS service in 2021. The Akamai outage resulted from a faulty software configuration update activating a bug in its Secure Edge Content Delivery Network. 

In a similar fashion to other attacks against service providers, Akamai’s outage caused widespread damage. Other websites—including American Airlines, Fox News, and Steam—all experienced performance issues following the incident.

11. Cox Communications

Cox Communications reported a major internet outage in March 2022, impacting nearly seven thousand customers in the Las Vegas region. 

The problem resulted from an NV Energy backhoe damaging a transmission line and triggering a power event. The surge caused a cable modem to reset, and many customers tried to reconnect simultaneously. As a result, it took several hours for service to resume. 

12.  Slack

The recent Slack outage in  January 2021 created havoc for distributed workers who rely on the platform for communication and collaboration. 

The platform’s outage impacted organizations across the US, UK, Germany, Japan, and India, with interruptions occurring for about two and a half hours. Slack says the issue came from scaling problems on the AWS Transit Gateway, which couldn’t accommodate a spike in traffic. 

Best Practices for Avoiding Internet Outages

At the end of the day, there’s nothing you can do to prevent outages entirely, especially if your business relies on multiple third-party systems. Eventually, your company or a partner will experience some level of service disruption.   It’s best to plan for them and, where possible, enable systems to ‘fail gracefully.’ 

As part of your resiliency planning, here are some steps to mitigate damage, maximize uptime, and keep your organization safe, along with some best practices to help you avoid disruptions from network and connectivity issues. 

Set Up a Backup Internet Solution

It’s impossible to protect your business from local internet outages completely. They can stem from issues like local construction, service disruptions, and more. 

Consider setting up a backup internet solution as a workaround, so you never lose connectivity. For example, you may choose to combine broadband with a wireless failover solution.

Consider a Multi-Cloud Strategy

If your business is in the cloud, it’s a good idea to explore a multi-cloud strategy. By spreading your workloads across multiple cloud providers, you can prevent cloud service disruptions from knocking your digital applications offline. This approach can also improve uptime and resiliency.

Use Website Performance and Availability Monitoring

One of the best ways to protect your business is to use website performance and availability monitoring. It provides real-time visibility into how end users are interacting with and experiencing your website.

A robust website performance and availability monitoring solution can provide actionable insights into the health and stability of your website. As a result, you can track uptime and performance over time and troubleshoot issues when they occur.

The Pingdom Approach to Website Performance Monitoring

SolarWinds® Pingdom® provides real-time and historical end-user experience monitoring, giving your team deep visibility from a single pane of glass. With Pingdom, it’s possible to protect against the kind of outages helping your company make headlines for the wrong reasons.

When you’re ready to jump in, try Pingdom by requesting a free trial today. 

This post was written by Justin Reynolds. Justin is a freelance writer who enjoys telling stories about how technology, science, and creativity can help workers be more productive. In his spare time, he likes seeing or playing live music, hiking, and traveling.

Source :
https://www.pingdom.com/outages/internet-outages-the-12-most-impactful/

Cybercrime (and Security) Predictions for 2023

Threat actors continue to adapt to the latest technologies, practices, and even data privacy laws—and it’s up to organizations to stay one step ahead by implementing strong cybersecurity measures and programs.

Here’s a look at how cybercrime will evolve in 2023 and what you can do to secure and protect your organization in the year ahead.

Increase in digital supply chain attacks #

With the rapid modernization and digitization of supply chains come new security risks. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 45% of organizations worldwide will have experienced attacks on their software supply chains—this is a three-fold increase from 2021. Previously, these types of attacks weren’t even likely to happen because supply chains weren’t connected to the internet. But now that they are, supply chains need to be secured properly.

The introduction of new technology around software supply chains means there are likely security holes that have yet to be identified, but are essential to uncover in order to protect your organization in 2023.

If you’ve introduced new software supply chains to your technology stack, or plan to do so sometime in the next year, then you must integrate updated cybersecurity configurations. Employ people and processes that have experience with digital supply chains to ensure that security measures are implemented correctly.

Mobile-specific cyber threats are on-the-rise#

It should come as no surprise that with the increased use of smartphones in the workplace, mobile devices are becoming a greater target for cyber-attack. In fact, cyber-crimes involving mobile devices have increased by 22% in the last year, according to the Verizon Mobile Security Index (MSI) 2022 with no signs of slowing down in advance of the new year.

As hackers hone in on mobile devices, SMS-based authentication has inevitably become less secure. Even the seemingly most secure companies can be vulnerable to mobile device hacks. Case in point, several major companies, including Uber and Okta were impacted by security breaches involving one-time passcodes in the past year alone.

This calls for the need to move away from relying on SMS-based authentication, and instead to multifactor authentication (MFA) that is more secure. This could include an authenticator app that uses time-sensitive tokens, or more direct authenticators that are hardware or device-based.

Organizations need to take extra precautions to prevent attacks that begin with the frontline by implementing software that helps verify user identity. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Risks Report, 95% of cybersecurity incidents are due to human error. This fact alone emphasizes the need for a software procedure that decreases the chance of human error when it comes to verification. Implementing a tool like Specops’ Secure Service Desk helps reduce vulnerabilities from socially engineered attacks that are targeting the help desk, enabling a secure user verification at the service desk without the risk of human error.

Double down on cloud security #

As more companies opt for cloud-based activities, cloud security—any technology, policy, or service that protects information stored in the cloud—should be a top priority in 2023 and beyond. Cyber criminals become more sophisticated and evolve their tactics as technologies evolve, which means cloud security is essential as you rely on it more frequently in your organization.

The most reliable safeguard against cloud-based cybercrime is a zero trust philosophy. The main principle behind zero trust is to automatically verify everything—and essentially not trust anyone without some type of authorization or inspection. This security measure is critical when it comes to protecting data and infrastructure stored in the cloud from threats.

Ransomware-as-a-Service is here to stay #

Ransomware attacks continue to increase at an alarming rate. Data from Verizon discovered a 13% increase in ransomware breaches year-over-year. Ransomware attacks have also become increasingly targeted — sectors such as healthcare and food and agriculture are just the latest industries to be victims, according to the FBI.

With the rise in ransomware threats comes the increased use of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS). This growing phenomenon is when ransomware criminals lease out their infrastructure to other cybercriminals or groups. RaaS kits make it even easier for threat actors to deploy their attacks quickly and affordably, which is a dangerous combination to combat for anyone leading the cybersecurity protocols and procedures. To increase protection against threat actors who use RaaS, enlist the help of your end-users.

End-users are your organization’s frontline against ransomware attacks, but they need the proper training to ensure they’re protected. Make sure your cybersecurity procedures are clearly documented and regularly practiced so users can stay aware and vigilant against security breaches. Employing backup measures like password policy software, MFA whenever possible, and email-security tools in your organization can also mitigate the onus on end-user cybersecurity.

Data privacy laws are getting stricter—get ready #

We can’t talk about cybersecurity in 2023 without mentioning data privacy laws. With new data privacy laws set to go into effect in several states over the next year, now is the time to assess your current procedures and systems to make sure they comply. These new state-specific laws are just the beginning; companies would be wise to review their compliance as more states are likely to develop new privacy laws in the years to come.

Data privacy laws often require changes to how companies store and processing data, and implementing these new changes might open you up to additional risk if they are not implemented carefully. Ensure your organization is in adherence to proper cyber security protocols, including zero trust, as mentioned above.

Source :
https://thehackernews.com/2022/12/cybercrime-and-security-predictions-for.html

Spikes in Attacks Serve as a Reminder to Update Plugins

The Wordfence Threat Intelligence team continually monitors trends in the attack data we collect. Occasionally an unusual trend will arise from this data, and we have spotted one such trend standing out over the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. and the first weekend in December. Attack attempts have spiked for vulnerabilities in two plugins.

The larger spikes have been from attempts to exploit an arbitrary file upload vulnerability in Kaswara Modern VC Addons <= version 3.0.1, for which a rule was added to the Wordfence firewall and available to Wordfence Premium, Wordfence Care, and Wordfence Response users on April 21, 2021 and released to users of Wordfence Free on May 21, 2021. The other vulnerability is an arbitrary file upload and arbitrary file deletion vulnerability in the Adning Advertising plugin with versions <= 1.5.5, with our firewall rule being added on June 25, 2020 and made available to free users on July 25, 2020.

Kaswara and Adning exploit attempts per day

One thing that makes these spikes interesting is the fact that they are occurring over holidays and weekends. The first spike began on November 24, 2022, which was the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. This spike lasted for three days. The second spike looked a little different, starting on Saturday, December 3, 2022, dropping on Sunday, and finishing with its peak on Monday. These spikes serve as an important reminder that malicious actors are aware that website administrators are not paying as close attention to their sites on holidays and weekends. This makes holidays and weekends a desirable time for attacks to be attempted.

During these spikes, exploit attempts have been observed against the Kaswara vulnerability on 1,969,494 websites, and on 1,075,458 sites against the Adning vulnerability. In contrast, the normal volume of sites with exploit attempts being blocked is an average of 256,700 for the Kaswara vulnerability, and 374,801 for the Adning vulnerability.

Kaswara and Adning sites comparison with spikes

The Kaswara Modern VC Addons plugin had more than 10,000 installations at the time the vulnerability was disclosed on April 21, 2021, and has since been closed without a patch being released. As long as this plugin is installed, it leaves the site vulnerable to attacks that make it possible for unauthenticated attackers upload malicious files that could ultimately lead to a full site takeover due to the fact that the ability to upload PHP files to servers hosting WordPress makes remote code execution possible. Any WordPress website administrators who are still using the plugin should immediately remove the plugin and replace it with a suitable alternative if the functionality is still required for the site, even if you are protected by the Wordfence firewall, as the plugin has not been maintained and may contain other issues. We estimate that about 8,000 WordPress users are still impacted by a vulnerable version, making them an easy target.

The Adning Advertising plugin had more than 8,000 users when our Threat Intelligence team performed our initial investigation of vulnerability on June 24, 2020. After some analysis, we found two vulnerabilities in the plugin, one that would allow an unauthenticated attacker to upload arbitrary files, also leading to easy site takeover. We also found an unauthenticated arbitrary file deletion vulnerability that could just as easily be used for complete site compromise by deleting the wp-config.php file. After we notified the plugin’s author of the vulnerabilities, they quickly worked to release a patched version within 24 hours. Any users of the Adning Advertising plugin should immediately update to the latest version, currently 1.6.3, but version 1.5.6 is the minimum version that includes the patch. We estimate that about 680 WordPress users are still impacted by a vulnerable version of this plugin.

The key takeaway from these attack attempts is to make sure your website components are kept up to date with the latest security updates. When a theme or plugin, or even the WordPress core, has an update available, it should be updated as soon as safely possible for the website. Leaving unpatched vulnerabilities on the website opens a website up to possible attack.

Cyber Observables

The following are the common observables we have logged in these exploit attempts. If any of these are observed on a website or in logs, it is an indication that one of these vulnerabilities has been exploited. The IP addresses listed are specifically from the spikes we have seen over the Thanksgiving holiday and the first weekend in December.

Kaswara

Top ten IPs
  • 40.87.107.73
  • 65.109.128.42
  • 65.21.155.174
  • 65.108.251.64
  • 5.75.244.31
  • 65.109.137.44
  • 65.21.247.31
  • 49.12.184.76
  • 5.75.252.228
  • 5.75.252.229
Common Uploaded Filenames

There were quite a few variations of randomly named six-letter filenames, two are referenced below, but each one observed used the .zip extension.

  • a57bze8931.zip
  • bala.zip
  • jwoqrj.zip
  • kity.zip
  • nkhnhf.zip
Top Ten User-Agent Strings
  • Mozlila/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.0; SM-G892A Bulid/NRD90M; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/60.0.3112.107 Moblie Safari/537.36
  • Mozlila/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.0; SM-G892A Bulid/NRD90M; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/60.0.3112.107 Moblie Safari/537.36 X-Middleton/1
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.67 Safari/537.36
  • Amazon CloudFront
  • Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.132 Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2224.3 Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_8_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2656.18 Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (X11; OpenBSD i386) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/36.0.1985.125 Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/55.0.2919.83 Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2762.73 Safari/537.36

Adning

Top Ten IPs
  • 65.109.128.42
  • 65.108.251.64
  • 65.21.155.174
  • 5.75.244.31
  • 65.109.137.44
  • 65.21.247.31
  • 5.75.252.229
  • 65.109.138.122
  • 40.87.107.73
  • 49.12.184.76
Common Uploaded Filenames

Most observed exploit attempts against the Adning plugin appeared to be nothing more than probing for the vulnerability, but in one instance the following filename was observed as a payload.

  • files
Top Ten User-Agent Strings
  • python-requests/2.28.1
  • Mozlila/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.0; SM-G892A Bulid/NRD90M; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/60.0.3112.107 Moblie Safari/537.36
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:88.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/88.0
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/105.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
  • python-requests/2.28.1 X-Middleton/1
  • python-requests/2.26.0
  • python-requests/2.27.1
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7; @longcat) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/103.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
  • Mozlila/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.0; SM-G892A Bulid/NRD90M; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/60.0.3112.107 Moblie Safari/537.36 X-Middleton/1
  • ALittle Client
Conclusion

In this post we discussed two vulnerabilities that have spiked over the past two weekends. Removing or updating vulnerable plugins is always the best solution, but a Web Application Firewall like the one provided by Wordfence is important to block exploit attempts and can even protect your site from attacks targeting unknown vulnerabilities. The Wordfence firewall protects all Wordfence users, including Wordfence Free, Wordfence Premium, Wordfence Care, and Wordfence Response, against these vulnerabilities. Even with this protection in place, these vulnerabilities are serious as they can lead to full site takeover, and the Kaswara Modern VC Addons should be immediately removed, and the Adning Advertising plugin should immediately be updated.

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Source :
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2022/12/spikes-in-attacks-serve-as-a-reminder-to-update-plugins/

Microsoft: Edge update will disable Internet Explorer in February

Microsoft announced today that a future Microsoft Edge update would permanently disable the Internet Explorer 11 desktop web browser on some Windows 10 systems in February.

This comes after a previous warning from June 15, the day Internet Explorer reached its end of support, when the company told customers that the legacy web browser would get disabled via a Windows update.

“The out-of-support Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) desktop application is scheduled to be permanently disabled on certain versions of Windows 10 devices on February 14, 2023, through a Microsoft Edge update, not a Windows update as previously communicated,” Redmond said on Friday.

“All remaining devices that have not already been redirected from IE11 to Microsoft Edge are scheduled to be redirected with the Microsoft Edge update scheduled for February 14, 2023.”

Enterprise admins are advised to transition from IE11 to Microsoft Edge with IE mode and remove IE visual references from the Start Menu and the Windows taskbar with the Disable IE policy before February 14 to avoid “business disruption at scale when users lose access to IE11-dependent applications.”

Next year’s May non-security preview release and the June Windows monthly security update are also designed to remove them in environments where admins will not act before IE11 gets permanently disabled.

BleepingComputer previously reported that Internet Explorer would redirect users to the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge when launching the Internet Explorer 11 desktop applications.

Starting in October 2020, IE11 has been automatically launching Microsoft Edge when visiting incompatible sites. The list of incompatible sites (managed by Microsoft) contains 7,562 domains belonging to a long list of high-profile online platforms and services, including Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Twitter, and many others.

During the redirection process, users’ data (including settings, passwords, and favorites) will be imported into Microsoft Edge to make the switch easier.

Internet Explorer still around for some time

Even though officially retired from multiple Windows 10 versions on the semi-annual channel (SAC) servicing channel and not shipping with Windows 11, IE11 will still be available on Windows 7 ESU, Windows 8.1, and versions of Windows 10 LTSC client, IoT, and Server.

The web browser will continue receiving technical support and security updates on systems running these Windows versions for the lifecycle of the Windows version it runs on.

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Microsoft has been urging customers to switch to Microsoft Edge with IE mode for years as it enables backward compatibility and will be supported through at least 2029—you can learn more about IE mode and how to make the switch in this getting started guide.

To enable IE mode in Microsoft Edge, you have to go to edge://settings/defaultbrowser, toggle on the ‘Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer‘ option, and restart the browser.

Microsoft first announced plans to ditch support for IE11 in Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 in August 2020, with an official retirement announcement issued in May 2021.

Microsoft discontinued IE support in Teams in November 2020 and also ended support across Microsoft 365 apps and services in August 2021.

Other Microsoft services and apps have also ended support for Internet Explorer during the last few years—a complete list is available here.

Related Articles:

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Windows 10 KB5020030 preview update released with ten improvements

Microsoft fixes Windows zero-day bug exploited to push malware

Learn to automate Windows with this PowerShell three-course bundle

Microsoft November 2022 Patch Tuesday fixes 6 exploited zero-days, 68 flaws

Source :
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-edge-update-will-disable-internet-explorer-in-february/