theDXT

Palo Alto Configure Master Key with HA (Active/Passive)

March 15, 2026

When you enter a private key or a password on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, it is encrypted with a master key. Out of the box, all Palo Alto firewalls use the same default master key, which used to be p1a2l3o4a5l6t7o8.

If your Palo Alto firewall uses the default master key and someone gets a copy of your firewall configuration, they may be able to decrypt the private keys and passwords stored in it. Fortunately, you can prevent this easily by configuring the master key to something unique.

In this post, I will show you step by step how to set your own master key on a Palo Alto Networks firewall in an Active/Passive High Availability Pair using the GUI and the CLI.

The Process

Backup your Palo Alto firewall config.

For more information on how to back up your Palo Alto firewall config, my blog post, Palo Alto Config Backup, goes into detail.

Disable HA Config Sync via the GUI or CLI.
Configure Master Key via the GUI or CLI.
Enable HA Config Sync via the GUI or CLI.

Disable HA Config Sync

We need to disable HA configuration synchronization on both firewalls while we configure the master key on each firewall.

Disable HA Config Sync GUI

On the Primary firewall, click on the Device tab.

Click on High Availability.

Click on the General tab.

In the HA Pair Settings, click on the gear icon in the Setup box.

Uncheck Enable Config Sync and click OK.

Commit the change.
Repeat the process on the Secondary firewall.

Disable HA Config Sync CLI

SSH into the Primary firewall.
Enter configuration mode with the command configure

Run the following command to check your current HA config sync settings show deviceconfig high-availability group configuration-synchronization

If enabled is set to yes, we need to disable it.

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Palo Alto Config Backup

March 14, 2026

It’s important to back up your Palo Alto Networks firewall configuration, as it is useful in the event of a system failure, configuration error, or other unforeseen circumstances.

In this post, I will show you, step by step, how to backup your Palo Alto Networks firewall config using the GUI or CLI.

The Process

GUI

Click on Device.

Click on Setup.

Click on Operations.

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ESX Regenerate Self-Signed Certificate

February 7, 2026

During the installation of VMware ESX, you’re never prompted to set a hostname or domain name. As a result, ESX defaults to the hostname localhost and the domain localdomain. Due to this when ESXi generates a self-signed certificate, it is for localhost.localdomain.

In this post, I will show you step by step how to regenerate the self-signed certificate for ESX.

Prerequisites

The ESXi hostname has been changed.

For more information about changing the ESXi hostname, my blog post, ESXi changing the host name goes into detail.

The Process

Connect to your ESXi host.
Right-click on the ESXi host and select Services > Enable Secure Shell (SSH).

SSH into the ESXi host.
To view the current certificate installed on your ESXi host, run the following command openssl x509 -noout -subject -in /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.crt

If you want to view all the details about your ESXi certificate, run the following command openssl x509 -noout -in /etc/vmware/ssl/rui.crt -text

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Veeam Backup & Replication 13 Windows Install

January 26, 2026

Veeam Backup & Replication is a wonderful product that I’ve been using for years. I’ve used it many times to recovery from various situations, and it’s been a real lifesaver.

VBR (Veeam Backup & Replication) is backup software that can back up your systems, whether they are bare-metal, cloud, or VMs. VBR supports various hypervisors, including VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix, Proxmox, and others, and has expanded its support to include backing up raw file shares or object storage. Veeam keeps adding more and more features to VBR. VBR is part of the Veeam Data Platform.

In this post, I will show you step by step how to install Veeam Backup & Replication 13 on Windows.

Prerequisites

You need a server with the following.

Windows Server 2016 or newer.
8 CPU cores or more.
16 GB RAM or more.
130GB disk space.
- 5 GB for the Veeam Backup & Replication installation.
- 4.5 GB for Microsoft .NET Framework.
- 10 GB per 100 backed up VMs.
- 100 GB for instant recovery cache folder.
- 10 GB for Logs.
Port 443 is available.

The required disk space doesn’t all have to be on the C drive. For this post, I’ll keep it on the C drive.

The Process

Mount the VBR ISO.
Run Setup.exe.

On the VBR 13 install splash screen, click on Install.

Click on Install Veeam Backup & Replication.

Wait while the setup wizard is initialized.

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Enable Windows 10 Extended Security Updates

January 18, 2026

On October 14, 2025, Windows 10 reached end of life and no longer receives updates. To keep getting updates, you must upgrade to Windows 11 or enroll in the Windows 10 ESU (Extended Security Updates) program.

In this post, I will show you step by step how to enable the commercial Windows 10 Extended Security Updates and how to mange ESU in non-persistent VDI setups.

Perquisites

Windows 10 ESU MAK.

Once you have purchased Windows 10 ESU, you will receive a MAK (Multiple Activation Key).

Windows 10 version 22H2.
- Windows 10 LTSB or LTSC are not eligible for ESU.
The following updates must be installed.
- 2025-10 Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 22H2 (KB5066791) or newer.
  - 2025-11 Security Update for Windows 10 Version 22H2 (KB5072653) installed after KB5066791.

The Process

Open Command Prompt or PowerShell as admin.

We will use slmgr.vbs which you can use directly or call it from csript. I will call it from csript to keep everything in the command line window. To use csript with slmgr.vbs we just need to prefix the slmgr.vbs command with cscript C:\Windows\System32\.

If you want to read more about slmgr.vbs, my blog post slmgr.vbs goes into detail.

First, we need to install the Windows 10 ESU MAK product key. We will do this with the following command slmgr.vbs /ipk YOUR_ESU_PRODUCT_KEY replace YOUR_ESU_PRODUCT_KEY with your Windows 10 ESU MAK product key.

Next, we need to activate the specific ESU component by using its Activation ID.

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slmgr.vbs

January 12, 2026

slmgr.vbs is the Windows Software Licensing Management Tool, a Microsoft Visual Basic script that comes with Windows and is a core part of the Windows activation system. The full path is C:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs.

You can use slmgr.vbs to troubleshoot, activate, change, and uninstall your Windows activation.

In this post, I will show you how to use slmgr.vbs.

Product Key

Windows commonly uses product keys to activate. A Windows product key consists of 5 blocks of 5 alphanumeric characters, totaling 25 characters.

Typically, the following characters are never in a product key: A, E, I, L, O, S, U, Z, 0, 1.

Most product keys are unique, but that isn’t always the case.

GVLK (Generic Volume License Key) keys are all the same because Windows won’t fully activate unless it can reach out to a KMS (Key Management Service) host.
MAK (Multiple Activation Key) are semi unique product keys. When an organization is issued a MAK, the same product key can be used a limited number of times before it stops working.
Generic Retail Keys (sometimes called RTM Keys) are the same product key and are typically used to upgrade from one Windows edition to the next. After the upgrade, a valid product key is needed.
AVMA (Automatic Virtual Machine Activation) product keys are all the same because they only activate when running as a guest on a Hyper-V host running an activated version of Windows Server Datacenter.

Application ID

An Application ID is a unique ID for each core component that can be activated with slmgr.vbs.

For example, the Application ID 55c92734-d682-4d71-983e-d6ec3f16059f is for Windows, and 0ff1ce15-a989-479d-af46-f275c6370663 is for Office.

Activation ID

An Activation ID is a unique ID for each component that can be activated. There are a lot of them.

Confirmation ID

A Confirmation ID is typically only provided by Microsoft when activating offline.

Output

By default, slmgr.vbs will output to a new window.

However, if you call slmgr.vbs with cscript instead, you can output everything to the command line.

For example

cscript c:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs /ato

Options

ipk

Install Product Key.

If you use /ipk with a product key, it installs or replaces the current product key.

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CyberChef

January 8, 2026

CyberChef is a web application with an abundance of tools, including decoding and encoding to and from various formats such as Base64, ROT13, XOR, and Hex. It is often referred to as the Cyber Swiss Army Knife, and I can see why. There are over 400 tools.

I’ve personally used CyberChef on many occasions, most commonly to decode Base64 or PEM certificates. To this day, I am still discovering new tools within CyberChef. Most recently, I’ve found a tool called Magic that helps you decode items with multiple layers of encoding.

A really cool thing about CyberChef is that it is developed and maintained by the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in the UK, which is the UK’s cyber, security, and intelligence agency.

In this post, I will show you how to use CyberChef and how to host it yourself with Docker and a Cloudflare tunnel.

Using CyberChef

Accessing CyberChef

If you search for CyberChef, there are a few versions online, but the only official version is hosted on the GCHQ GitHub, which can be accessed at https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/

CyberChef Layout

Once you have accessed CyberChef, you will see four main panels.

The first panel is the tools, also known as operations. The next panel is the recipe. The next two panels are the input and the output.

Baking

To use CyberChef, you need to bake it. Baking consists of using operations to make a recipe.

To make a recipe, you need to drag an operation onto the recipe panel.

For example, if I wanted to decode the following Base64 string VGhpcyBpcyBCYXNlNjQgaW4gQ3liZXJDaGVm.

I would drag the From Base64 operation over to the recipe panel.

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Install or Upgrade Duo Authentication for Windows Logon

January 5, 2026

In this post, I will show you how to use my Duo Authentication for Windows Logon PowerShell scripts to check whether Duo Win Logon is installed, install Duo Win Logon, or upgrade Duo Win Logon.

Previously, I wrote the blog post Upgrading Duo Authentication for Windows Logon. That blog post covered how to upgrade Duo Win Logon using the MSI. However, later on, Duo changed Duo Win Logon enough that the application now requires Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 Redistributable, which is not bundled with the MSI installer but is bundled with the EXE installer.

Another limitation of the MSI deployment is that you need to create a transform file to silently install Duo Win Logon. With the EXE installer version of Duo Win Logon, you can specify everything with silent install arguments.

The PowerShell Scripts

Duo-Win-Logon-Checker.ps1

The first PowerShell script checks if Duo Win Logon is installed and reports its version. It is a refactored version of the duo-checker function from the Duo Win Logon MSI upgrade script.

The script uses the Prog-Finder function from the Install Matrix project.

It also tells you if the version of Duo Win Logon is old. For the old version detection to work correctly, you will need to edit the NewVersion variable. You can check for Duo Win Logon releases by reviewing the Duo Win Logon release notes.

Duo-Win-Logon-Install.ps1

This script uses various functions from the Install Matrix project to install Duo Win Logon.

For this script to work, you will need to edit the InstallArgs variable.

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Install Matrix

January 4, 2026

At EUC World Amplify 2025, I gave a presentation titled “Transforming Chaos into Control: Mastering Windows App Deployments with Intune“. The presentation covered the ways I’ve been deploying applications with Intune that aren’t just repackaging the same Win32 application each time there’s an update. Instead, I package a PowerShell script as a Win32 application.

If you are interested in the presentation, I created a landing page on GitHub that includes the PowerPoint file. You can find that on my GitHub here.

Presenting the Install Matrix at EUC World Amplify 2025.

During the presentation, I introduced a GitHub project called the Install Matrix that I created in collaboration with a coworker. The goal of the Install Matrix is to modularize each part of a PowerShell install script into functions that can be reused in new PowerShell scripts to install applications. The Install Matrix helps reduce duplicate work, making it quick and easy to package applications and reducing overhead when updating them.

You can check out the Install Matrix GitHub repo here https://github.com/thedxt/Install-Matrix

In this post, I’ll show you how you can use the Install Matrix in your own PowerShell scripts.

Putting it Together

When creating a PowerShell application install script with the Install Matrix, the first step is to set the script’s defaults. Typically, this will include the temp folder, the silent install arguments, and a download URL.

Usually, I define these as CmdletBinding, allowing for simple parameter changes if needed.

Example

  [CmdletBinding()]
  param (
      [string]$TempDir = "C:\Temp",
      [string]$InstallArgs = '/S',
      [string]$DownloadUrl = "https://download.website.com/program.exe"
  )Code language: PowerShell (powershell)

For the download URL, if the application vendor doesn’t have an always-current URL, I recommend setting up your own URL shortener so you can update the URL for new versions without changing the script or repackaging.

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Duo Authentication Proxy Upgrade

January 3, 2026

Duo Authentication Proxy is a very useful way to add MFA to LDAP and RADIUS. It is also a way to sync your users with Duo. You can install Duo Authentication Proxy on Windows or Linux.

While older versions of Duo Auth Proxy typically keep working, a Duo certificate expires in February 2026, and you will need to upgrade to version 6.5.1 or higher to avoid being affected.

In this post, I will show you step by step how to upgrade the Duo Authentication Proxy for Windows.

The Process

Review the release notes for each Duo Authentication Proxy version between your current and target versions.

Here are the Duo Authentication Proxy release notes.

Check the Duo documentation to confirm if you can upgrade directly to the target version.

Typically, you can skip versions when upgrading, but some versions introduce changes that may affect compatibility or functionality, and not all upgrades are backwards compatible. Here is the Duo documentation about skipping versions of the Duo Auth Proxy.