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Case Studies

Troubleshooting and engineering analysis write-ups.

Step-CA JWK encryptedKey Corruption — Python Dict String in ca.json​

Step-CA failed to initialize after vault_edit.py wrote a Python dict string representation instead of valid JSON for the JWK encryptedKey field in ca.json, blocking fleet cert issuance.

  • Type: case-study | Lifecycle: active | Created: 2026-06-24 | Last reviewed: 2026-06-24
  • Tags: automation, debugging, incident-response, infrastructure-as-code, root-cause-analysis

VM Cloning Authentication Failure Case Study​

Diagnosing SMB authentication failures in a peer-to-peer Windows network caused by duplicate SIDs from improper VM cloning.

  • Type: case-study | Lifecycle: active | Created: 2026-03-04 | Last reviewed: 2026-04-05
  • Tags: authentication, debugging, virtualization, windows