In this blog post I demo cracking SQL Server 2025 login passwords offline with hashcat, including the current stable release (7.1.2).

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday invitation comes from Marlon Ribunal, and it's titled "That One SQL Server Outage You’ll Never Forget".

In this post I cover Disaster Recovery tests, what they are, what's their purpose, and why some organizations and institutions skip them.

a PowerShell-based tool that outputs SQL Server health and performance diagnostics data to either Excel or HTML, and saves execution plans and deadlock graphs as .sqlplan and .xdl files. - VladDBA/...

SQL Server Management Studio 22 just went GA this week, so I figured I'd document my new configuration in a blog post.

In this post I cover the process of setting up, connecting to and interacting with an Azure SQL DB container in QNAP's Container Station.

In this post I cover the process of setting up, connecting to and interacting with an Azure SQL DB container in Podman.

How an attacker can take advantage of SQL Server 2025's sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint to exfiltrate data from a compromised instance.

In this post I'm querying Shodan's REST API directly from SQL Server using SQL Server 2025's sp_invoke_external_rest_endpoint.

In this post I dig through some data that Shodan.io provides for internet-exposed SQL Server instances, their versions and locations.

From now on, I'm going to be releasing annual versions of the First Responder Kit, starting with this one, which I'm calling the First Responder Kit 2026. I'll still release more frequently on Github, but I won't be blogging about it here. I want to make it easier for folks who don't update that often. I'm also going to be syncing my classes up with the annual releases - for example, …

Meta's camera-equipped "AI Glasses" are so divisive that some adopters are reportedly leaving their expensive smart glasses at home.

This month's T-SQL Tuesday invitation comes from Brent Ozar, and it's titled "When I’m looking at a query, I bet it’s bad if I see __.".

YouTube video by Kai Lentit

In this post I cover some unpleasant side-effects of using heaps in SQL Server for anything else than staging tables.

Save big on Brent Ozar's Live classes: 50% off launch pricing plus an exclusive 10% extra discount code. See how much you can save.

In this post I cover my experience as a first time speaker at a Data Saturday conference at Data Saturday Croatia 2026.

The president of the encrypted messaging app says autonomous AI agents, device scanning and digital advertising are converging into a new architecture of surveillance.

Vlad Drumea is an accomplished SQL Server DBA, Data Platform MVP & MCSE with over 14 years of experience, with a focus on performance tuning.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.

PSBlitz 6.1.0 is out; it brings new backup and security checks, improved Excel performance, support for ImportExcel PowerShell module.

In this post I cover SQL Server roles and permissions that can act as viable avenues for privilege escalation to sysadmin.

Made-up therapy referrals, incorrect prescriptions among the common mistakes.

In this post I'm going over potential reasons why some characters end up displayed as question marks or squares in SQL Server.

In this post I address improper security configurations and their impact, as well as recommendations for securing SQL Server linked servers.

ALT: a painting of a person with the words illustrate soul on the bottom right

This post is my guideline on how to handle and test SQL Server backups to ensure their viability and avoid a "Schrödinger's backup" scenario.

In this blog post I demo cracking SQL Server 2025 login passwords offline with hashcat, including the current stable release (7.1.2).

In this post I'll go over three points that are vital in preventing SQL injection when working with dynamic T-SQL.

Add hash mode for Microsoft SQL Server 2025 (MSSQL 2025) sql login hashes Module 1732 adds support for cracking SQL Server 2025's new sql login password hashes SQL Server 2025 introduces a new ...

My second time participating in T-SQL Tuesday, Steve Hughes‘s invitation about an impactful session from a conference brought back memories.