Tag: Muses

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Back to the basics

I submitted my request to my work to cover the PWK course to help me get my OSCP.  I haven’t heard back yet, and I think that is a good thing – I need to read and study more.   I am back into Georgia’s Book – chapter 6.  I feel like a kid getting ready to try to climb a mountain using hills as practice.  But the hills are good – there is just a lot to learn.  Back at it!

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Getting Swamped!

You know when you have so much information, you don’t know where to start, so you just don’t?  That is where I am at the current moment.  It’s good, but it’s been 2 weeks, and I really haven’t made progress on Georgia’s book.  Today, I will work on it.  That is until I get the OSCP material!

I have been doing a few things other than studying – but it’s been good.  I have been:

  1. attending the first CSA-DC chapter meeting.  I met Anil, the host and founder of the chapter at a Federal Cloud Summit in DC.  I really enjoyed it and will go back for their next meetup in January.  But I met Martin there!  He’s a pentester AND he is from Argentina.   That’s awesome – we met up later again to talk about how to get into pentesting and Argentina, which my family and I are vacationing to in February of next year.
  2. Attended the 2018 Cyber Maryland conference.  I really had a good time.  Some jerk talked my ear off about how idiotic I am for being a federal employee and how he’s racist inherently because he’s white.  Just some random stranger.  We live in some odd times, folks.  But after that, it was awesome!  There were three presentations that stood out to me:
    1. One on Snowden and Quantum Computing.  It solidified my thoughts on Snowden – he’s a traitor and really F*&#$ up our national security.  99% of what he leaked isn’t even about privacy.  It was national secrets, folks.  You’re welcome, Russia.  I also really enjoyed the discussion on Quantum Computing.
    2. Synthetic Identities on the Dark Web.  I never knew how susceptible kids are to identity fraud so easily.  Freeze your Kids credit, folks.
    3. Election Security.  We need to go to paper ballots.  But we are idiots and apparently, West Virginia is going to use blockchain to have votes counted.  Mobile Voting in the 2018 elections.  It’s a horrible idea.

      xkcd
      I met Amber there!  Totally awesome person – she told me about some things that she is working on and I really hope to stay in touch.

  3. Decided through Martin and my wife that I am going to just start studying for the OSCP.  I have been waffling around books and thinking about getting my Pentest+ (which is so new, no one knows if it’s good), or retake the CEH… Inna stated that if she is going to give me the time to study, just go for the one that matters – and Martin, he thinks the same thing.  The test with 3 months of the lab is $1,150.00.  That, in hindsight, is nothing, and if I fail, it’s only 60 bucks for a retake.   So, I am going to make a case to my boss about taking it, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll just pay for it out of pocket.  Work is slowing down for the holidays – I am going for it.  I am going to #tryharder 🙂

tldr; I did some stuff, made some friends, F&$%# it, I am going straight for my OSCP.

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Hello world. Long time coming.

I sometimes tease my wife for starting things, and then never really finishing through on them.  Like starting a project, and then it falls by the wayside.  It’s very hypocritical of me, as I myself start so many things, with a passion that later dwindles.  Not this time.

Case in point.  This isn’t my first blog.  I have little blogs stored in the crevices of the Internet that I am not sure where they all are.  I have been a Web Design Studio (fully equipped as an LLC), I have done DJing, I have been a radio broadcaster, and a podcaster all under the iMova “umbrella” of my online identity.  This part of the Internet, imova.com, has been patiently “under construction” for what feels like an eternity.

When I started as a “photographer” by creating a flickr account, it was in Bettles, Alaska at 2 am on my birthday when the sun was still in a haze above the arctic circle.  How fitting would it is then to start my “cybersecurity blog” on my birthday.   2 am today.

See, I want to be a Penetration Tester.   I want to be a good, confident (that’s half the battle), technical penetration tester.  So I have been picking up books and committing to someday, get a real technical certification under my belt, my Offensive Security Certified Penetration Tester (OSCP) certification.  I just picked up The Hacker Playbook 3, as working through Georgia’s Penetration Testing book has been good, I got stuck sometimes as the tech is getting old in that book.

Reading the introduction to The Hacker Playbook, Peter Kim harps on the criticality to have your own site, that your own public blog speaks volumes.  I always knew this.  Following up, I am inspired by the richest man on the planet, Jeff Bezos, who said that if he never tried this Internet thing, he would never know he could ever do it.

So here it is, my attempt to try to work into Penetration Testing.  I think this is what iMova.com should be used for.  I might chat about other things too, but I aim to tag my postings to filter relevancy.

begin.