Cougar Y CCCougar

Note

I’ve written a newer optimized 2026 version of this guide with a faster setup using Zinit + Starship and improved plugin loading.

This version avoids slow shell startups and works better with modern Zsh setups.

Updated guide: https://gist.github.com/n1snt/2cccc8aa5f7b645a7628d3512c70deb6

Oh my zsh.

Retrieving VMware Workstation VM encryption passwords saved in the the Windows Credential Manager

When creating an encrypted VM, VMware Workstation gives you the option to remember the password. It does this by storing the password in the Windows Credential Manager.

VMware does not provide a way to retrieve this stored password, but it can be accessed via the Win32 CredReadW API function.

There are a number of PowerShell projects including PowerShell Credential Manager which provide access to this API, but in testing I found they were unable to correctly display the VMware password.

This PowerShell example has been tested using Windows PowerShell (v5.1) and PowerShell (v7) using VMwa

	// from http://www.goinggo.net/2013/11/using-log-package-in-go.html

	import (
	"io"
	"log"
	)

	var (
	_TRACE *log.Logger
	_INFO *log.Logger

	#include <string>
	#include <locale>
	#include <codecvt>

	//UTF-8 to UTF-16
	std::string source;
	//...
	std::wstring_convert<std::codecvt_utf8_utf16<char16_t>,char16_t> convert;
	std::u16string dest = convert.from_bytes(source);

	# Fileless WMI Persistence (PSEDWMIEvent_SU - SystemUptime)
	# https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_14587908.html

	<#
	.SYNOPSIS
	This script creates a persisted WMI event that executes a command upon trigger of the system's uptime being between a given range in seconds. The event will trigger only once.
	#>

	$EventFilterName = "Fileless WMI Persistence SystemUptime"

	package main

	import (
	"github.com/kardianos/service"
	"log"
	"flag"
	)

	type Service struct {}

	package main

	import (
	"fmt"
	"io"
	"log"
	"os"
	)

	func main() {

	KFZUS-F3JGV-T95Y7-BXGAS-5NHHP
	T3ZWQ-P2738-3FJWS-YE7HT-6NA3K
	KFZUS-F3JGV-T95Y7-BXGAS-5NHHP
	65Z2L-P36BY-YWJYC-TMJZL-YDZ2S
	SFZHH-2Y246-Z483L-EU92B-LNYUA
	GSZVS-5W4WA-T9F2E-L3XUX-68473
	FTZ8A-R3CP8-AVHYW-KKRMQ-SYDLS
	Q3ZWN-QWLZG-32G22-SCJXZ-9B5S4
	DAZPH-G39D3-R4QY7-9PVAY-VQ6BU
	KLZ5G-X37YY-65ZYN-EUSV7-WPPBS

	package main

	//#include "dllmain.h"
	import "C"