I live in Estonia where citizens, e-residents etc can use their ID card to prove identity by signing documents, open encrypted files that are intended for a specific individual and so on.
For that purpose we here use card readers (of course).
The problem is, unlike USB mice, USB keyboards and such things, to get it work I need first to restart my Mac. In other cases keychain won't see this device and I won't be able to do anything with it.
Is there a way to make my ID card work and seen by keychain without restarting my machine every time I want to use it?
Maybe there's a way to somehow restart just keychain or something.
All right, that was easy enough.
If somebody experiences kind of same issue, just reset NVRAM and SMC.
Related
Recently installed AutoHotKey to remap some keys in order to play a video game. It seemed simple/attractive enough at first. Was not really sure of how it worked but found the .chm file in the download which states in the first line of Usage & Syntax/Using the program:
AutoHotkey doesn't do anything on its own; it needs a script to tell it what to do.
Sounds 'secure' enough to me. Seems like mature software. Maybe overkill (now I know it certainly was overkill) but let's just see how it works.
My remapping was simple enough: change the AWSD keys for the LEFT-UP-DOWN-RIGHT keys. Script syntax is simple enough, just used an example that comes with the install files. Works essentially as expected. Got an annoying pop up after playing the game for a bit from AutoHotKey saying "you've pressed mapped keys 600 times" or something like that. Which was only a little annoying, so I ignored it the first few times. The game I play is real time so getting a even a 5 second interruption while in a match would mean certain loss, so I decided to just disable the script and uninstall.
Lo and behold: when I stop the script, the keys continue to be remapped. Was there some background process running? Maybe. I rebooted only to find that on my Windows login screen my keys continue to be remapped. Huh? Did AHK mess with some registry bindings or something?
I do not know that much about how Windows works, but my vague recollection is that registry bindings is something is active once the OS is active. I search on the web for say 1 hour before I give up for the time being and I end up activating the script again in order to write normally. This works as expected and I literally forget about it until any time I have to reboot.
Honestly a minor annoyance, but due to the world changing very quickly I lately have very few precious minutes that I can actually sit down on my desktop, whereas I used to be able to spend hours on this type of computer issue in order to get to the bottom of it. In other words, my current solution felt good enough. But not anymore. I think something more serious and possibly nefarious may have occurred. I don't want to seem dramatic but I just discovered something else a few minutes ago.
I have a Linux installation on another drive and I just happened to want to load it up after my last Windows blue screen (have gotten a couple of those lately, literally 2 in the space of 2 days and this had maybe only ever happened once before, like 2 years ago, so I am a already concerned about a possible deeper issue). My firmware/bios has a password and guess what I found when I tried inputting it: the keys were still remapped.
At this point I am at a complete loss. I didn't even think this sort of thing was possible. Some OS level software caused a change that was able to be reflected on the bios? Did it affect the keyboard driver? A driver that both windows and the motherboard bios use?
What else have I tried or looked at:
Device Manager claims my Keyboard has 3 instances of "HID Keyboard device". Not entirely sure why it shows 3. Properties show it has 2 driver files: kbdclass.sys and kbdhid.sys, which I suppose are some standard drivers. Not sure how to proceed.
My keyboard is inland (cheapest i could find at microcenter) i am not sure why I cannot find the website for that company. Found some drivers on reddit but they are on some sysadmin's google drive. I will download that exe when i am desperate...
UPDATE
I 'solved' the issue bye getting another keyboard (an old IBM KB-0225) and everything is now in order. I tried disconnecting the Inland keyboard and reconnecting, but after reconnecting I was still experiencing the same issue.
I don't know if I should close this question as there is no longer an issue, but I would like to see if anyone has any other additional theory as to why some software/driver changed occurred inside a keyboard device. As far as I knew, these devices have not internal memory other than possibly some logic gates.
There must be a background process running.
to check that:
note : For windows 10
On your taskbar, click on the ^ button (skip this step if there is no such button)
right-click on the sign.
click on "exit"
If the above steps do not work, try keeping a watch all the time, to see if you notice something uncommon.
How do applications like CloneDVD2 or AnyDVD know that the free phase is over, even if the application was uninstalled and then re-installed? Those applications don't require the user to login so that they could identify the user again.
Also on deinstalling them a window pops up asking whether the "registration files" should be kept or not. Even if they are not kept, the re-installed application knows the demo-time is over.
How is that technically realized?
Could be everything...
You might reverse the algorithm to find out.
But to name an example:
It's possible to generate a hash, based on unique hardware identifiers, of your hardware configuration and send that over the internet to a database.
If your hash exists over there, the software knows you ran it before.
An other option is leaving tracking information inside of your OS. So the checkbox: delete register information, isn't deleting everything.
To test:
1) Switch GPU or CPU :P
2) Format & Reinstall computer
I Used to change my Mac Adress in Open Networks with the command:
ifconfig eth0 ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
in iOS4 this was no Problem, i remember there was even an App on Cydia for that. For ifconfig i instaklled network-tools from BigBoss Source.
Since iOS5 the Command is going thru Terminal without any error, however the MAC-Address isnt changing anymore... Someone a Idea on how to change it?
It's possible. For some reason, spoofing it in iOS 5 won't work (either via command line or MacX4), but you could always rewrite it in hardware. There are several cons to this and this is not worth during unless you absolutely have to: it will break your music player (so you have to use VLC or the like), is permanent even after reboot, and effectively changes your UDID (so betas will not work and the device will be unregistered).
nvram wifiaddr="XX:XX:XX:XX:XX"
Again, the cons definitely outweigh the pros here. I'm sure eventually someone will come up with the software to do a spoof, not a total rewrite.
It can be done. My iPad running 5.01 has an arbitrary MAC. There are no restrictions as far as playing music, and I am still able to access Apple services (at least those that I use personally) without hindrance. It's a moderately tedious process, but after a bunch of failed attempts I was able to successfully (and permanently unless I decide to repeat the process using my originals) change the values with a combination of terminal commands, DFU/recovery cycles, OSX apps, and a clean restore via iTunes. If anyone is still interested, I would be willing to outline the process. I would do so now, but I have to hash out some specifics concerning the iTunes host file.
Because the MAC address is unchangeable for a reason?
I need to check which key the user must hit to boot their PC from a USB key or a CD.
Does it depend on the BIOS maker, or on the maker/model of the motherboard?
I was told about the nice, open-source Speccy to get some information on the hardware, but is there a library that I could use to get the same info from a (.Net) program and tell users precisely which key to hit on their very own computer?
Thank you.
There is no way you'll be able to find this out without building a comprehensive library of every single type of motherboard and manufacturer ever made, including any BIOS updates that might change it.
You should just ask the user to follow on-screen instructions when their computer to boots to select the boot device, and maybe offer some likely suggestions ("It will ask you to press a function key...")
At the stage you want to press enter or key, .NET will never be available.
We have an auto update for our software that is installed via USB key (with the auto run). If I wanted to ensure that only authorized USB Keys were used, what's the best way?
Our installer is already signed, and it won't run otherwise. But I'm more wanting to inspect the USB Key for a signed installer, and if it's not there, just ignore, or even "Eject" the USB device.
And I should be able to tell the difference (in code) between a usb storage device, and say a camera, or keyboard.
I'm only wanting to disable non-authorized storage devices.
Thank you for your ideas.
non-authorized storage devices? This depends on how secure you want it to be. For the most secure level, it would consist of:
special firmware written to the flash drive to get extra "meta info" (read: expensive custom manufacturing of flash drives)
special windows driver to read that meta info from the flash drive
your program talking to that device driver to confirm it's authorized.
Or to the least secure level you have these options:
using a hidden file and a special key(possibly hashed time of last filesystem modification or something?) (dd breakable)
dropping below the filesystem level and recreating your own very simple filesystem.. (more security through obscurity though and dd could break that)
Also, for the "most secure" option, you really need a more secure way of running the program than auto-run and a device driver(which could be half-baked to make anything appear authorized). Why do you want it to only update from an authorized flash drive anyway?
You might be able to read the USB drive's serial number (assuming you get USB drives that have serial numbers; not all do). Then your application could call home to get the latest list of authorized serial numbers, and check to see if there is a match.
Earlz response is good, though I don't think you'd need custom manufacturing of flash drives... you would just need flash drives with some sort of unique firmware encrypted identifier. Perhaps something in the Kingston Data Traveler Line might do the trick. (I've never actually used one of these encrypted usb sticks, so I'm a bit foggy on the actual implementation details).