Many, many and many administrators request new certificates and mark private keys as exportable. Is this a good solution? Definitely no. Are there a reasons to do that? In most cases — no. Do I need to explain the subject? Definitely yes.

In many MS guides that are suited with custom certificate enrollment you may find certificate enrollment configuration INF file like this:

Recently I decided to perform little changes on my OCSP Responder. I'm using offline CA (root) and have configured to include OCSP URL to all issued certificates. But some time I haven't OCSP configuration for  my root CA. And today I have completed all changes and now Root CA issues OCSP signing certs for appropriate OCSP configuration.

You can find required info about the subject on TechNet: Online Responder Installation, Configuration, and Troubleshooting Guide or in AskDS blog: Implementing an OCSP responder: Part IV - Configuring OCSP for use with Standalone CAs. However both links contains incorrect settings, therefore I'll post correct steps.

Update 23.08.2010: added workaround to resolve the issue.

Today one customer claimed that AppLocker rules are not worked for his environment. He just created simple path rule and it didn't work. I have investigated this issue and I'm able to confirm that AppLocker don't apply path rules to a folder that contains non-english letters. Here is an example how to reproduce this issue. Assuming you have default Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise installation with C:\Windows as a system root folder.

Disclaimer: this article contains information about modifying the IIS configuration files. Before you modify the IIS configuration file, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the file if a problem occurs.

This article contains information about unsupported operations. Before you modify any settings described below, make sure to backup your system and make sure that you understand how to restore the system if a problem occurs

A little abstract. The Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) is an Internet protocol used for obtaining the revocation status of an X.509 digital certificate. Why it has been developed? Prior to OCSP, clients checks certificate status (valid/revoked) using certificate revocation lists (CRLs). Client software downloads certificate issuer CRL file and examines its Revocation List property. If particular certificate serial number is present in CRL, certificate is considered as revoked or invalid and is rejected for usage. While CRLs may contain many revoked certificates, CRL size is grown. Typically empty CRL with default settings is about 600 bytes (the CRL size generally depends on field and extension textual information length and signing certificate key length). Each revoked certificate entry is about 80 bytes. If 10 certificates are revoked, CRL size will be: 600 + 80 * 10 = 1400 bytes. For 100 revoked certificates the size will be about 9 kilobytes. For 100 000 revoked certificates, the size will be approximately 8 megabytes.

In this article I want to talk about Applocker rule priority and rule sorting. As you know, Applocker has one security level or default action — Disallowed all except explicity allowed. This is common misunderstanding point for some administrators.

When you create Path or Publisher rule, it cannot uniquely identify particular file. For example, when you create Path rule such C:\BusinessPrograms\*, it will allow to run anything within C:\BusinessPrograms folder and all subfolders. Or, for example, you create Publisher rule that will allow to run any file that is signed with ‘Microsoft Corporation’ digital certificate, regardless of actual file location. It is common scenario when you want continue to block some files that are located in this folder or subfolders (in Path rule case) or files that are signed with particular certificate subject (in our case this is ‘Microsoft Corporation’ certificate), however.