Configuration: Pin taskbar icons

[Ana06]

Details

Pin the following icons to the taskbar:

• File Explorer (if possible with the Tools folder)
• cmd.exe (Run as admin)
• Chrome
• IDA
• fakenet (Run as admin)
• CFFExplorer
• procexp (Run as admin)
• Process Monitor (Run as admin)
• notepad++

This is to be add to the default config file (config.xml). We can probably implement this similarly as in https://github.com/mandiant/VM-Packages/blob/6423a6184172bd7a2af51eb1554551d8f45d7553/packages/debloat.vm/tools/win10.xml#L164

Requires https://github.com/mandiant/flare-vm/issues/510

[Ana06]

depending how easy the code is, we could consider adding a helper function in common. This also could be used by commando-vm and directly by the users (for example to change the taskbar in a provided VM with flare-vm installed).

[Ana06]

Idea: Use syspin. We may need to create a Chocolatey Shortcut (since that supports the -RunAsAdmin flag) to star tools as admin.

[Ana06]

For ida, see https://github.com/mandiant/VM-Packages/issues/694

[emtuls]

@Ana06 Unfortunately, syspin only works to pin .exe files and won't work with shortcuts/links and I was unable to find a simple set of powershell commands to make this work.

• Having shortcuts be able to be pinned seems to be one of the only ways I can find that would allow us to have pinned items 'Run As Admin' and would allow for a pinned File Explorer that start in the Tools directory.

If we want to continue with the shortcut route, one option I looked into that seems promising is to use a custom Start Layout: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/windows-10-start-layout-options-and-policies

• We can create an .xml file that contains the paths to shortcuts/executables that we want pinned to the taskbar.

• Initial testing seems like this method would work, but this would require adding a new CustomStartLayout.xml somewhere such that the following Powershell command can be run:

  • Import-StartLayout -LayoutPath "C:\Path\To\CustomStartLayout.xml" -MountPath "C:\"

• We could then also have a different CustomStartLayout.xml, one for FlareVM and one for CommandoVM.

Would this be a viable option to consider?

Otherwise, we can continue down the path of using syspin, but I don't know if we'd be able to have pinned items be set to 'Run as Admin' via automation. I'll continue to look at alternative options and see if I can find other ways to make this work though!

[Ana06]

File Explorer (if possible with the Tools folder)

Extracting this into https://github.com/mandiant/flare-vm/issues/535 to have more independent issues, as is is not the main goal of this issue.