Windows 10 cracking

I work in IT so I frequently have an interest in checking out how the "other" team works their magic.  It comes up from time to time that for completely legitimet reasons I need to use tools that might be considered hacking tools. The most recent case of this came up a few days back, someone set a non-standard password a laptop that the company owns.  It wasn't written down and I've since forgotten it.  It's not critical, but it is the backup for a system that we use to control the lights in the facility. I tried different combinations for a few days, but finally decided to dip into my back of tricks.

The following video (that you'll need to turn on closed captioning for) shows the steps to break into an up to date windows 10 machine by having physcial access to the machine.

The short version is use the bios/boot options to boot into a windows installer disk. From there start the install and go to the repair this machine option.  Use the commandline to rename the on screen keyboard executable to osk.old and copy cmd.exe as osk.exe. Exit the install media and boot to the sign on screen.  On the sign on screen open the accessability menu and turn on the on screen keyboard.  Boom now you are running a command prompt with administrative rights.

The command net user <username> * lets you set a new password.

Time to break in is under 10 minutes.

Hidden drawer in a toe kick

If you aren't familiar with Ikea hackers this is a great project to get most anyone interested in the site.  It's a drawer hidden in the toe kick of a cabinet.  I think it is brilliant, and think most people with even a modest interest in security would think its cool as well.

via Ikea hackers

Click through as the article has more images of how they went about it.  Pretty slick and well done.

BitCoins?

Anyone taken the plunge and started using bitcoins for anything? I have an account and other than the free .02 bitcoins I have yet to earn a single coin from letting the process run on my machine for several weeks. I am assuming that this has to do with the massive number of people that are not choosing to pay a transaction fee, (its optional, and set by default to 0).

The newest client doesn't even have the option to "generate coins" so I am wondering if they think that it is big enough that people will just be buying off the markets.  Either way they have been in the news quite a bit lately with hacking and the exchanges getting hit.