I found this useful security tip on Microsoft.com. SAFE is the recommended permission setting for assemblies that perform computation and data management tasks without accessing resources outside an instance of SQL Server. We recommend using EXTERNAL_ACCESS for assemblies that access resources outside of an instance of …

Editor’s note (2025): AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was discontinued in 2017. This post reflects observations from 2007 about AIM 6’s network behavior at that time. A friend asked me what port AIM used and I guessed something along the lines of 5190. I wanted to check to make sure and, after issuing the command netstat …

Recently, a user trying to login to OWA encountered the following error: HTTP 403.1 Forbidden: Execute Access Forbidden You have attempted to execute a CGI, ISAPI, or other executable program from a directory that does not allow programs to be executed. Another network administrator noticed that the URL was strange …

If you haven't been to meebo.com (archived), you probably haven't needed to chat from a location that restricts chat program installs ;) Meebo.com is super slick; with nothing more than a browser, you can access your favorite chat network. The unencrypted meebo.com site does encrypt your password but stops there. By …

In helping a visitor to troubleshoot running my IIS FTP ban script, I realized that while XP makes it appear as though it doesn't support banning users by IP address, it actually does provide that support; you just have to ban the IPs programatically. Here, you can see that the IP address and domain name restrictions …

Note (2025): This post targets legacy IIS FTP on Windows 2000/2003 (IIS 5/6). Those platforms are long out of support and the approach below is preserved for historical reference. For modern Windows Server and IIS FTP, prefer built-in controls such as IP and Domain Restrictions, Windows Defender Firewall rules, and …

[super old post, reposted] A few weeks ago, I asked in an IT forum if it was possible to have a "perma-VPN" connection with Windows XP. Note from 2025: Windows Server 2003 has been out of support for years. The content below reflects what worked in 2006 and is kept for historical reference. After searching …

Last night I got locked out of my Compaq DL360's iLO. I searched the web to find how to reset the Administrator password and read that, for the most part, I'd have to be at the console. Bah! My servers are in San Jose and I'm up here in San Francisco, I didn't want to make a trip just to reset my passwords. I continued …

I used the following code a while back as part of a solution to automate the banning of spammers via their IP address. 1'Here, we will pretend this is an imported list 2Dim XMLarr(1) 3XMLarr(0) = "65.19.238.21" 4XMLarr(1) = "198.31.175.100" 5 6Set objIIS = GetObject("IIS://localhost/w3svc") …

I have another blog that mentions random words like "daughter","school", "dirty", "bad", "dog", "herself", "year", "nasty" and "old." Until I started reviewing my HTTP referers, it never even occurred to me that nasty perverts …