Category: Windows (Page 4 of 6)

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 2 – IIS WebServer

January 3, 2026 / Michael Waterman / 0 Comments

Other parts in this series

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 1 – Preparation

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 3 – Offline Root CA

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 4 – Enterprise CA

In the previous part, I’ve covered the design choices and preparation work needed before touching any infrastructure. In this part, I’ll finally start building something: the PKI Web Server.

I know, I know, not the most exciting exercise, but stay tuned, perhaps I’ll have some former Microsoft Security engineer tips here! However boring, this server plays a crucial role in the overall trust model. It hosts:

The Certificate Revocation List (CRL)
The Certificate Distribution Point (CDP)
The Certification Practice Statement (CPS)

In short: it becomes the “public-facing” component of your PKI.

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 1 – Preparation

December 31, 2025 / Michael Waterman / 3 Comments

Other parts in this series

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 2 – IIS WebServer

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 3 – Offline Root CA

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 4 – Enterprise CA

Over the last couple of years, I’ve written a lot about Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Not the “click next, next, finish” type of posts, but the deeper stuff, why you’d pick one design over another, and what trade-offs you’re really making.

Even so, I still see people struggling with PKI. Sometimes even setting up a relatively simple environment turns into a painful mix of conflicting guides, half-implemented best practices, and “set it and forget it” assumptions. The reality is: PKI quietly underpins almost everything we trust in modern IT environments, but it’s often poorly documented, inconsistently implemented, and rarely treated like the living service it actually is.

From ClickOps to DevOps, building secure Windows images with Packer on Proxmox

December 19, 2025 / Michael Waterman / 5 Comments

Update 26-12-2025: Uploaded new and improved PowerShell scripts to GitHub. Added Windows 11, Ubuntu Server & Ubuntu Desktop to the repository.

In June 2023, I wrote a blog about the principle of clean source. At its core, clean source is about knowing exactly what you are using as the foundation of your installations, and automating that process so the outcome is predictable and repeatable.

Back then, I relied on what we now have to call legacy tooling. While that approach still works, it was already showing its age. Tools like MDT have been deprecated for quite some time, and although community efforts try to keep them alive, it’s clear that this path is slowly coming to an end.

That realization pushed me to take a step back and ask a simple question: why not approach this from a DevOps mindset instead? As it turns out, that opened the door to some pretty cool possibilities.

Fixing Packer + Proxmox template build failures: “can’t lock file … got timeout”

November 29, 2025 / Michael Waterman / 0 Comments

While automating my Proxmox environment with Packer, most of the workflow worked flawlessly: Ubuntu autoinstall, cloud-init, SSH provisioning, and qemu-guest-agent all behaved exactly as expected. But every build consistently failed at the very last step, converting the VM into a template, which was very annoying.

Despite the VM installing perfectly, Proxmox refused to stop it cleanly and returned a persistent lock-related error. This led to a surprisingly long troubleshooting process, which eventually revealed a simple root cause: stale lock files left behind from earlier interrupted builds……sigh

In this post, I’ll share the exact error, the steps I went through to diagnose it, and how cleaning up these old lock files immediately restored stable, repeatable builds, it’s been a few very long days…

A better Power(Shell) experience on Windows Server Core

November 9, 2025 / Michael Waterman / 0 Comments

While setting up my new Proxmox lab, I decided to give my Windows Server Core templates a small Power-up, literally. One thing that always bothered me about Server Core is the small, fixed-size PowerShell window you get by default after logging in.

PKI – Part 6: Demystifying the CAPolicy.inf file

May 18, 2025 / Michael Waterman / 2 Comments

Ever heard of the capolicy.inf file? It’s like a digital instruction manual for a Certificate Authority (CA) server. It pre-configures the CA and has a say in how certificates are set up or renewed. In other words, it’s a behind-the-scenes helper that ensures everything is governed with digital certificates. In this blog post, I’ll break down what this file does and why it matters in plain and simple terms.

PKI – Part 5: Creating Unique Object Identifiers (OIDs)

May 10, 2025 / Michael Waterman / 5 Comments

Introduction: Why OIDs matter in PKI

When building or managing a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), precision and uniqueness are not optional, they’re very essential. Don’t be one of many, be your unique self! One key element that reflects this is the Object Identifier (OID). OIDs are globally unique values used to identify everything from certificate policies and application purposes to custom certificate extensions and cryptographic algorithms.

Detecting weak passwords in Active Directory

April 10, 2025 / Michael Waterman / 5 Comments

A little while ago, I wrote about the shift toward passwordless authentication and why we need to rethink our dependency on traditional passwords. While I’m still convinced that passwordless is the future, and the sooner we get there, the better. At the same time I also see the reality most environments are still dealing with.

Enable RDP hardware acceleration on a Linux VM in Microsoft Hyper-V

March 5, 2025 / Michael Waterman / 6 Comments

How to pass through a GPU and optimize remote performance in Ubuntu

Running a GPU-accelerated remote desktop on a Linux virtual machine (VM) in Microsoft Hyper-V can significantly improve performance for graphical applications, GPU intensive workloads, and even remote testing. However, Hyper-V does not support full PCI passthrough like VMware or Proxmox. Instead, it provides Discrete Device Assignment (DDA), which allows passing a GPU directly to a VM.

Step-by-Step Guide to Windows Event Forwarding and NTLMv1 Monitoring

June 29, 2024 / Michael Waterman / 22 Comments

Did you know that Windows has had a built-in capability to function as a SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) system for years, provided you stay within the Windows ecosystem? This powerful feature, known as Windows Event Forwarding (WEF), allows you to centralize event logs from multiple Windows machines, giving you a comprehensive view of your network’s activities.

Category: Windows (Page 4 of 6)

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 2 – IIS WebServer

Other parts in this series

How to: Build a PKI with PowerShell – Part 1 – Preparation

Other parts in this series

From ClickOps to DevOps, building secure Windows images with Packer on Proxmox

Fixing Packer + Proxmox template build failures: “can’t lock file … got timeout”

A better Power(Shell) experience on Windows Server Core

PKI – Part 6: Demystifying the CAPolicy.inf file

PKI – Part 5: Creating Unique Object Identifiers (OIDs)

Introduction: Why OIDs matter in PKI

Detecting weak passwords in Active Directory

Enable RDP hardware acceleration on a Linux VM in Microsoft Hyper-V

How to pass through a GPU and optimize remote performance in Ubuntu

Step-by-Step Guide to Windows Event Forwarding and NTLMv1 Monitoring

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