The Admin’s Arsenal: lsgrab.exe
Several months ago I found myself with a unique need; I needed to take screenshots of a remote machine at specified times during the day (don’t ask, it’s a long story filled with management douchebaggery). I did quite a bit of searching, and eventually settled on lsgrab.exe by Geert Moernaut (I’m pretty sure this guy is responsible for Lansweeper, which El Di Pablo recently reviewed).
This little gem is a console application designed to do one thing: take screenshots of remote computers.
There are a few caveats (but it filled the need I had):
- It is NOT free. It is donation ware, the author requests a €5 donation (about $9 USD), however this is not stated anywhere before you download it (it’s in the readme file in the .zip download).
- You must have administrative permissions on the target computer.
- Someone must be logged on to the target computer.
- Works on Windows 2000, Windows 2003, XP (I haven’t tested it on Vista or 2008 yet).
Since it’s a console app I just copied it into the C:\Windows directory on my workstation, and then wrote a script to use it to take timestamped screenshots. Worked great. I’m not sure what other uses I might find for it, but for the $9 buy in, it is definitely something I will drop into my bag of tricks.
You can download lsgrab.exe here
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about 3 years ago
Don’t you hate corporate Douche-Baggery? I sure do! Hehehe great article.
about 3 years ago
Ugh, it drives me nuts! I mean c’mon, aren’t we all adults here? Can’t we just act like it? Some days I feel like Dad constantly telling the “kids” to behave :)
about 3 years ago
You and me both buddy. The stories I could tell… The lives I can shatter with a few lines from our proxy server’s log.
I wish corporate would stick by its rules instead of heading up black op’s!
about 3 years ago
For remote screen shots, I have used “Screen Grabber”
http://www.bauer-power.net/2008/01/take-screenshot-remotely.html
I hate douchebaggery as well!
I just had a secret agent mission myself recently where I had to secretly search a remote laptop for files containing certain key words. I felt like such an A-Hole doing it, but hey, its a living.
about 3 years ago
Not only is it a living its a hard market to find work in!
about 3 years ago
This is a great tool and a great article. I love seeing these real world examples Joe. Please keep them coming.
I look forward to my ata updates everyday. Do you have a best of feed?
about 3 years ago
I agree, it’s a great tool. I would be interested in how you timestapped your screenshots. Can you please supply your script?
cheers
about 3 years ago
Sure, you can view the script I used here: http://joe-it.com/vbs_lsgrabremote.html
about 3 years ago
Thanks Joe and that is my first glimpse of your site. I laughed my ass off on the 404 error.
It’s all fun and games until someone looses an eye (or a webmaster and a eye in this case)
about 3 years ago
Thanks, that site is something that I’ve been working on for like 2 years lol. I just can’t seem to find the time to get it complete. It started out as an internal site at my last job, something for the guys to have a good laugh over and still be able to find things.
Then I got onto this “everything has to be html and css” kick, and well you see where it’s gotten me.
One of these days I’ll find the time to go through and fix all those broken links, and maybe even get all my content converted over from the old site. Then again I may just switch web hosting to slicehost, and install wordpress, I kinda like not having to write pages in html… :)
about 3 years ago
Thanks very much Joe. That is a nice template.
about 3 years ago
Hi.
Its a nice toy.
But Mcafee (.dat of september 2008) says that it contain a troyan called “Generic PWS.y”.
This troyan is a key logger (and other things).
Its a false positive?
Anybody can confirm this?
Regards
about 3 years ago
I just downloaded and rescanned – looks clean as a bell to me. Anyone else seeing virus warnings?