SSD, The Future is Now!

Computers these days have lots of memory, fast CPUs and big hard drives. In almost every way, they are better than computers from five years ago. The problem is that when you use them, they feel like the same old computers. They are faster, but you still feel like you’re waiting for them to boot, waiting for programs to load, waiting for games to load, waiting for them to shut down, and waiting for them to reboot. Enter Solid State Drives (SSD) and all that is about to change.

It’s 2010 and SSD prices seem to be dropping quickly. I picked up a 64GB Kingston SSDNow V Series at Newegg for $94 after rebate. For me, when new technology drops below $100, I don’t feel like I’m overspending for the cutting edge. $50 off the regular price helps too.
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5 reasons to take that government cyber security job

Mike Subelsky had a great list of reasons you might not want to take a government cybersecurity job, I followed up with a few additions. It got me thinking that it wasn’t all bad, there are actually reasons that someone might enjoy a career working with the government. So, here are a few reasons that you might enjoy a cybersecurity job with Uncle Sam.
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Todo.txt, a command line todo list

Todo.txt is a shell based todo list manager. It reads and writes to text files, which makes it portable and easy to edit with other tools. I run a copy on my Mac, but you can run it anywhere you have a shell, for example on a VPS that you can access remotely.
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The Cybermen are coming!

In a recent AP article, a researcher describes a hypothetical scenario where given $100 million dollars he could build a cyber army in two years. Link here. I found this interesting because the tone of the article suggested that cyber armies like this don’t already exist.
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How to build a covert network with OpenVPN

There are many uses for a covert network, for this hypothetical scenario we are corporate spies and we need to exfiltrate data from our assets inside the target corporations network. I don’t think the concepts here are new, but I haven’t seen any decent how to’s for a setup like this.

I’m going to skip some steps that aren’t relevant to the configuration and use of OpenVPN, the reader needs to accept that my corporate target has a compromised host on their network. This includes how the VPN is hidden from the target, how root access is obtained, etc. Those details are left to the reader. I will discuss possible solutions, but not how to implement them. This configuration could just as easily be used to share pictures between family members.
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Ubuntu LDAP client How To

This works with Ubuntu 10.04 clients using an OSX Snow Leopard OpenLDAP server. It should work with other variants, but I had such a terrible time finding documentation for ubuntu and osx, that I decided to post this.
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EFW NAT Loopback

To allow users on internal interfaces to access the external IP, you need to add a Source NAT rule. This is sometimes referred as NAT Loopback.

* Source: Network of your LAN subnet
* Destination: GREEN/ORANGE
* Service: ANY
* NAT: Auto

Works with Endian Firewall Community 2.3. It probably applies to other similar FWs like IPCop and Smoothwall.

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Network Analysis 2.0: Staying Ahead of the Threat Curve with AIRE

INTRODUCTION
Automation, innovation, reaction and expansion (AIRE) are the foundation of the next generation of analysis techniques and tools – Network Analysis 2.0. The importance of data network analysis is often overlooked, but it impacts many areas including cyber defense, cyber intelligence, law enforcement / investigative analysis, and financial and critical infrastructure. Cyber attacks are conducted daily by organized groups around the world, and network analysis is important for maintaining total cyber situational awareness. AIRE enables analysts to make huge strides in data analysis, maintain a competitive advantage and stay one step ahead of attackers.
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Getting an image via tftp at the rommon prompt

* rommon 1 > IP_ADDRESS=192.168.11.11
* rommon 2 > IP_SUBNET_MASK=255.255.255.0
* rommon 3 > DEFAULT_GATEWAY=192.168.11.1
* rommon 4 > TFTP_SERVER=192.168.11.100
* rommon 5 > TFTP_FILE=c2600-io3-mz.122-9.bin
* rommon 6 > tftpdnld

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