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I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

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171–180 of 196 posts

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#171
post #156
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like adding an exception is the intended way to do exactly what you’re doing and resolves the issue entirely. It also sounds like you wrote bad software that didn’t consider the architecture of the parent OS.

That “architecture of the parent OS” is so shitty they had to introduce a first party “Dev Drive” mode to disable said architecture wholesale so that developer workflows aren’t crippled. Think about that. I assume you either don’t really know what you’re talking about, or are arguing in bad faith. Oh, and people develop software for a living and sometimes that involves making sure the software works on Windows. Not e…

But again if the architecture of the OS is shitty/doesn’t meet your needs at some point you gotta stop using it and stop complaining.

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#172
post #153
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A skilled user. I understand and mostly support the idea of mandatory AV for the people who can barely handle the concept of a file system. There is also a class of user forged in the fires of the primordial internet who would never in a trillion years be tricked into clicking a fake explorer.exe window in their browser. Giving users choice is the best option. Certainly, make it very hard to disable the AV. But, don'…

Skilled in what exactly? In x-raying all data storages on a system with a naked eye and spotting there a malware? In sniffing ether around the system and smelling a malicious bits on the radio spectrum coming in? How does this skill works?

> How does this skill works?

I've been using computers for 40 years, have never installed and have always disabled malware scanners, and never had a virus. Maybe I'm special. But I'm not that special. There are 3 billion Android uses in the world, almost all of them don't have malware scanners, and almost all of them have never been infected by a malware. Ditto iPhone users.

To be fair, I haven't used Windows for the latter 1/2 of that 40 years. So maybe it's only Windows users who need to go around x-raying all data storages.

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#173
post #19

What does CTF stand for?

A security competition of sorts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_the_flag_%28cybersecur...

Cool, but why would you need to travel to do that? They mentioned they often travel with 2 laptops for CTF.

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#174
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly if this isn't part of a public API this isn't very cursed in terms of C++, especially if you have a lot of one-off cleanup operations. I think the only bit I don't like personally is the syntax. I normally implement defer as a macro to keep things clean. If done correctly it can look like a keyword: `defer []{ something(); };`.

I think the syntax is exactly why they're saying it's cursed. IMO your suggestion is no better - yes it makes defer look like a keyword, but it's not! As I said in a sibling comment, I think it's clearer if you're honest that you're using a macro: DEFER([](){something();}); Or you could even make a non-macro version (but then you need to think of variable names for each defer): auto defer_uninitialise = do_defer([]()…

Sure, I've used __LINE__ for this before too, and yeah I agree that my keyword construction was too clever (seemed cool at the time, since the macro had a dangling = at the end to make it work).

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#176
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A security competition of sorts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_the_flag_%28cybersecur...

Cool, but why would you need to travel to do that? They mentioned they often travel with 2 laptops for CTF.

> My current main machine for non-ctf things is an M4Pro MacBook, and usually, when I am going for a CTF I bring an another x86 laptop with me to do some extensive reverse engineering/pwn stuff as it is usually built for the x86 cpus. Emulation would kind of work for this task but it is pretty painful so I just use an another laptop for all the x86 stuff.

Seems like they don't want to bother with emulation when many of the challenges are not compatible with their main computer.

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#177
post #62
post #46

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Why would Microsoft care how much money I spend with my CPU core vendor?

Because Microsoft charges per core: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/pricing

Oh, that's for the server.

Somehow when I hear 'Windows' I only think of desktop use, not servers.

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#178
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skilled in what exactly? In x-raying all data storages on a system with a naked eye and spotting there a malware? In sniffing ether around the system and smelling a malicious bits on the radio spectrum coming in? How does this skill works?

> How does this skill works? I've been using computers for 40 years, have never installed and have always disabled malware scanners, and never had a virus. Maybe I'm special. But I'm not that special. There are 3 billion Android uses in the world, almost all of them don't have malware scanners, and almost all of them have never been infected by a malware. Ditto iPhone users. To be fair, I haven't used Windows for the…

Most Android users have the malware scanner in Google Play Services enabled.

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird that windows wouldn't have a signed manifest that would detect that

It does have that. Windows uses code signing and either DISM or SFC to do that. But this isn't about the binaries. It's where definitions and configuration are stored. It's C:\ProgramData, not C:\Program Files. The system also can't object too severely. Third party endpoint protection exists.

My bad. You correctly understood my mistake here. I assumed it was clobbering a binary

Re: I ruined my vacation by reverse engineering WSC

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to share the powershell script with us?

https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat I start with Tiny11 first though these days, then run that to get rid of the last few bits.

I found that this script broke Win+R Run dialog history by setting Start_TrackProgs. This was undocumented, and I had to disable it manually. (Worse yet, it doesn't show up on GitHub search because the .reg files are UTF-16.)
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