Posts made by maz_net_au

New ring with new chips.

I did contact Microsoft about their companion devices framework and got a response from Anoosh asking for more information, but havent heard any more since then. I assume I'll get a response that either says that its not suitable for what we're doing here, or that we can get access to this framework. That'll presumably be win10 or higher so I'll keep working on the old solution anyway.
My new NFC ring arrived today so I'll finish off the code and use that to register the new device to test the process and then upload it all to github.

Made a heap of progress today but the new features aren't finished or tested. Of course there is heaps more work to do but I might be able to get around storing an unencrypted password finally. I've tested my new setup a few times and it works but I'm definitely in unchartered territory with this so I think I'll keep testing it myself for a while (a week or 2) in case it all goes horribly wrong.
the good news is significantly improved registration process (i.e. you swipe a ring and the machine locks, when you log back in thats the account that it uses for unlocking). I'll have to ponder the implications of having that setup that way but for now it seems to work as well as the old solution.
I have some more scenarios to test to see if i can find out what is requesting auth using the standard credential prompt. If i can get some kind of consistant ID I'll be able to make a plugin that handles a CredUI popup (i.e. when using remote desktop or file shares etc) and gives an appropriate response based on the ring swipe.

Progress!

All in all, a busy day. It made me laugh, it made me cry, but none of that matters so long as it works.

My relocation is still being postponed for reasons beyond my control.
It looks like I should probably apply for access to the companion device framework although it looks like it is essentially going to work the same way as the current Sesame software does, but fixes the issues I have with needing to hold onto the password.

It's a long weekend this weekend so I'll see what I can do.

Hi
It has been a while. I lost the inlay out of my ring that I was using for unlocking my pc so i hadn't been using the software for a while. I just found it again tonight and once I glue it back in I should be able to do some more work on it. I have found one bug with the new network based architecture that I've fixed and I still need to finish writing the config file part of it.
Does anyone have more specific focus for my net round of updates? Keeping in mind that I'm (obviously) the last person you'd ask to design UI and UX.
Maz

@chadg
There absolutely is progress happening with this. I'm putting updates in another thread https://forum.nfcring.com/topic/724/project-an-extensible-plugin-based-windows-service-that-performs-actions-for-nfc-events/38
and the code is all on John's github https://github.com/mclear/Sesame

I'm in Japan again for a while. Hopefully today I can go and source some tiny NFC reader from Akihabara and then continue working on it this weekend (its a long weekend in Japan). I'll definitely post a video when i've made some more progress. I'll also update the github. But now that I've got this idea, I'm going to move the credential provider part of the service as a main part, rather than as a plugin so that it makes more sense to use this so suspend plugin processing (so that swiping a ring with an RDP credential prompt up doesnt lock your local machine instead of passing the login). Otherwise i'd have to make a more complex rules engine for processing plugins

i.e. you'd "activate" a plugin to run "only when the machine is logged in" and set the order that they ran and also make one be able to stop processing all of the others. and this might have to be registered on a "per ring" basis.
so
check ring
-> get list of plugins
-> get machine state (locked, unlocked, awaiting credential)
-> run plugins in order
-> check plugin result, and stop processing plugins if required

Its all doable. I'll work on it and post an update when i've made a decision for how I want to do things.

I was just tinkering and found a neat feature. Because my credential provider talks to the service, I can have it suspend the services normal functions when a credential window is active. Which means I can use my ring to log into remote servers etc. its just a matter of getting the name of the server from the context of the credential provider (im sure its there somewhere. otherwise it sends my usual username and password).
Anyway. just thought that was cool.
Maz

I am alive. I made it to the USA and i have my nfc reader with me. Unfortunately, I don't have a PC yet but I can continue development using my laptop (and windows 7).
If people could use the issue tracker on https://github.com/mclear/Sesame that'd give my work a bit more direction.
Thanks
Maz

That's interesting. The limit in Australia seems to be $100 (AUD.. currently about US$75) and there aren't any fees to recover your money if you report the problem promptly.

@Alicja-Dul
It doesn't limit NFC, it just means that someone (or lots of someones) need to write some software to do it. The biggest issue is that everyone needs to agree on how to do it, otherwise you'll need to install your special software onto someone else's phone to get it to work.

I assume the linkedin app monitors for the URL or the website is able to launch the app. Which is one of the suggestions i made above. Start trying to convince the other social media groups to do it?

I just used the outer tag to send people to my websites contact page which works well for me.

Random question. Does anyone actually need a 32-bit version?
I just had a quick look and I don't think there is any reason it can't be made except that I don't have a single 32-bit machine anywhere (not even among friends and family) so I'm not sure its worth any effort.
Maz

Just for balance, I dropped my 2016 Horizon ring 1.5 meters onto a tile floor and I was expecting the worst but it was fine (it bounced a few times). While this has probably weakened it and I likely won't get away with it again, it's seriously impressive how strong they are.

This is how apps work on mobile phones. It has nothing to do with the NFC ring. It is the same if they click a link to your profile on a webpage. Worse yet, the different mobile platforms handle deep-linking a little differently.

The nfc tag is just saying "open url: your.url.facebook.com" or whatever. After that, it's the software on your phone that does the rest and that is where the problem lies. Send a message to google, apple, microsoft, facebook, linkedin, twitter etc and see if you can convince them to make the system more streamlined.

I wonder if they could actually make the facebook website detect that it is being opened on a phone that has the app installed and then from the browser, launch the app. I suspect not but you can always ask.

Okay. Update 7 is the last for the night. Could other users with windows 10 please test and see if the credential provider / unlock part fails if the machine is left locked for 5 minutes. I need to find out if it is specific hardware that is causing it or windows 10 in general.
Thanks.
Maz

Hi,
I have a bit more info. I tried the solutions to the "greyed out none option" problem on Google, even though mine is missing rather than greyed out and it didn't fix the problem. In theory, if it had been one of these problems, the "swipe" option would also be similarly affected so I'm pretty sure that this is not the case.

Specifically I tried clearing my credentials (i had no user credentials anyway). I removed my exchange account. I cleared all the checkboxes for everything in the device administrators.
I havent tried a full hard reset yet (because I'd have to save all the data on my phone first).

The option is still entirely missing.
Maz

Apologies to anyone who is in the process of updating, I just remembered that I needed to handle bad data from a card reader better than just crashing the whole system. So I've just added update 6.

Package updated. Now with even more logging.
Also, I tested it on win 7 and 10 tonight so I can confirm it works on everything since win7 and its just specific configurations that have problems that I need to look at.

@Lokki
Also, I just left mine locked for about 3 hours while i was out and it was still running when I came back. So we'll have to troubleshoot for cause (i cant immediately replicate it).

The service is supposed to go into a suspend state as soon as it gets a "OnSessionChange" message from the OS. The whole time it's locked, the service should be essentially not doing anything, but still set as "Running".
In the "NFCRingServiceHost.exe.config" file is an isDebug setting near the bottom of the file. Set that to "True" and then lock the pc for 5 mins. Attach the log.txt file here if the service stopped. At the moment it just logs what events it got and startup / shutdown signals so theres no private data in it (human readable if you want to check it out). That'll be able to tell me what is going on.
Thanks
Maz