Jim's Blog

How to remove passwords from protected Microsoft Word documents

Jim — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:34:38 +0000

There's always been a need to remove passwords from protected Microsoft Word documents when you need to make a change. My most common occurrence is with Human Resource (HR) forms. HR staff will create the MS Word document, password protect it, and then upload it to our company intranet. However, when I need to fill [...]

Securing ASP.NET Web Sites: Form Caching

Jim — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:25:38 +0000

What is "Form Caching Vulnerability"? The Form Caching Vulnerability allows sensitive form fields to be cached and retrieved by another user on the same client. CWE-525: Information Exposure Through Browser Caching Securing ASP.NET Forms If your web site users are submitting sensitive data via forms, then you should not cache the form fields. If a [...]

Securing ASP.NET Web Sites: Cookie Vulnerabilities

Jim — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:15:42 +0000

This is the first of my series on securing ASP.NET web sites. As I work through various vulnerabilities, I’ll document instructions for fellow web developers in hopes that we can help build more secure web applications. The Cookie Vulnerability falls under the common vulnerability name of "Broken Authentication and Session Management." What is "Broken Authentication [...]

Comicster Plug-In: Debugster

Jim — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 03:45:59 +0000

Debugster is a suite of debugging and development tools for Comicster. I’ll go over each of the various tools below. Property Window Output Console Dynamic Execution Property Window The Property Window allows you to view all of the properties (attributes) of the selected item. For example, if you select "Action Comics 1" then you’ll see [...]

My Top 5 Comic Book Trades

Jim — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 18:20:37 +0000

Over the last couple of years, I’ve restarted my comic book collecting hobby. A couple of weeks ago, I came up with an idea to create a list of my top 5 comic book trades that I wanted to own (that I didn't already have). So that, over time, I can eventually find these books [...]

Comicster Skin: The Hero Initiative

Jim — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:36:51 +0000

For my first Comicster Skin, I decided to build a customized user interface highlighting the Hero Initiative. I’ve been a bronze member for the last couple of years (ever since I discovered the charity) and I felt that the idea of making a skin to highlight the Hero Initiative would be a great idea. At [...]

Comicster Plug-In: Auto Save

Jim — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:47:33 +0000

My third Comcister Plug-In is to create an “auto save” feature that will automatically save my comic book collection without requiring me to click the “save” button. This auto-save feature will check every 60 seconds to see if the comic book collection has been modified and if so, then save the collection. I’m re-using some [...]

Comicster Plug-In: Create Backup of Collection

Jim — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:14:30 +0000

The second Comicster Plug-In I created was for the purpose of making backup copies of my collection. Although my collection isn’t huge, I feel that entering all of the data and having to go through all of my comics to get an accurate list was enough effort to merit making regular backups. With this plug-in, [...]

Comicster Plug-In: Reload Images

Jim — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 20:20:35 +0000

The first Comicster Plug-In I created was to assist importing of my previous Comicster v1 collection. After the import, the issue cover images needed to be refreshed/redownloaded. The below code illustrates how the plug-in works. The code below is shown looping through each issue within the “Owned” folder within the source collection. This process is [...]

Comicster Plug-In Development

Jim — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:05:07 +0000

I’ve been using Matt Hamilton’s Comicster application for a couple of years to manage my comic book inventory. The .NET based open source project written using Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) has worked great to keep track of my comics. There’s several other comic book inventory management applications that’s available. However, most of them cost money [...]