How to learn a foreign language
Lots of people around the world spend a good chunk of time learning languages, but in the US, it’s rare to find someone who grew up speaking English who can speak anything else. I have long enjoyed studying languages, and I think the best courses ever made for development of actual fluency in the language […]
The death of WFP
One of the nicer little changes to Vista is the re-engineering of Windows File Protection into Windows Resource Protection (WRP). As everyone who’s ever tried to construct a partial checked build knows, replacing a file like ndis.sys in older OSes was a pain - you had to edit the registry and boot with the debugger […]
Driver signing whiteboarding
Jennifer Stepler spent some time whiteboarding at the MVP summit about signing. She was explaining that there are two different kinds of signing in the Windows world: Device Installer signing and Code Security Signing. Here are her notes:
In search-engine-findable text:
DMI [device management & installation] -> .cat file
Install Time
32 & 64-bit
Unsigned Driver pop-up
Unsigned
Signed by untrusted cert
Signed-by […]
Kernel-mode code signing and the boot loader
A common misconception in the driver-signing world is that boot-start drivers must have a signature embedded in the driver binary itself. This is not strictly true, although it’s still the right thing to do.
To re-cap, x64 systems check every kernel-mode binary on load for a digital signature. The signature can be an Authenticode signature or […]
Some notes on signing
We had some extended discussion at the MVP summit on the topic of driver signing. Jennifer Stepler from the WDK team spent a couple of hours talking through the various kinds of signing and clearing up the confusion.
To recap, there are two kinds of signing used in the [Windows] world today: code signing and device […]
Always use the latest WDK
One of the first topics that came up at the MVP summit with the kit team was which DDK/WDK to use for which target OSes. The answer is simple: always use the latest released dev kit. You can build drivers for any supported OS with the latest WDK.
This is at variance with advice seen in […]
MVP Summit wrap-up
I had an awesome time at the MVP summit in Seattle and Redmond this week. The executive briefings were about what you’d expect - roadmaps, technology overviews, etc. The Gates keynote was good, particularly once he got to the 45-minute question-and-answer part.
But, once again, the highlight of the week was the time spent with the […]
New DTM newsgroup
Don Burn pointed out on NTDEV today that there is a new DTM newsgroup: microsoft.public.development.device.drivers.dtm. Microsoft had gotten some negative feedback from the driver dev community, myself included, over DTM-related communications. Hopefully this will be a useful new forum.
Someone recently referred to Driver Test Manager as A lunatic’s nightmare on NTDEV. Not many people like […]
Hi from the MVP summit
I’m at the 2007 MVP Global Summit this week. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun - executive briefings, product team discussions, and an interesting-looking party are on tap for the next two days. Wi-Fi has been spotty and my Verizon data service has been only marginally more reliable.
An amazing thing […]
Incompetence makes security harder
I just finished a series on how hard security is. Here’s another little anecdote that Matt just sent my way.
It turns out that the National Tap Ensemble, which bills itself as America’s national tap dance company, has been had. Question #6 from their FAQ contains the following nice quote:
This is a professional, highly-respected organization so […]