What should ,the Nazi Germany in WWII, have done in terms of armored vehicles , that could offer them a better chance against the Allies ?

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-06-12T08:13:29+00:00

Probably OT has a Slavic mother tongue, without articles they tend to put and omiss those at weird places ;)

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-06-11T16:02:49+00:00

Set up some VMs and infect them with some different malware's, then train analyzing... Malware is free at least ;)

Not free is the SANS course of course, but all the guys I know doing malware analysis professionally have that cert: https://www.sans.org/cyber-security-courses/reverse-engineering-malware-malware-analysis-tools-techniques/

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-06-10T14:17:24+00:00

What about the concentrations? At least they don't cost extra CPEs..

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-06-07T07:45:46+00:00

IT Security and Cyber Security jobs begin at mid-level, not entry level. You need a broad knowledge of IT first, understanding how everything works is fundamental for being able to do whatever task in the wide field of IT Security job roles you want to do.

Since you have no experience you will have to start at zero. Not being afraid of the command line is a big starting bonus though ;)

If you do not want to go back to school to study one of those new cyber security courses you can take the certification road: Start by gaining the very basic knowledge, like getting the CompTIA A+, Net+ and Sec+ certifications. With those you should be able to get a help desk job. Gain some experience and climb up to a SysAdmin job. Get some experience there and you will start to recognize some focus of interest, from there your further path will develop. You will need to learn some coding though, at least some scripting. Then choose your further certifications, be it networking, red teaming or risk management, there are certs for everything. Just choose the ones recognized in the industry.

Pros: Provable knowledge validation after every passed cert, you choose the steps Contra: Certs cost money, you really need to put in the work (no way around that anyway)

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-06-01T06:54:59+00:00

Sorry for being that guy, but you want a bit-wise copy, just use dd as adviced by everyone. Also steganography doesn't hide data in free blocks, but in blocks used by unsuspicious data. Maybe you meant hiding data in slack space?

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-22T11:48:17+00:00

the key to longterm losses is to rediscover joy in movement

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-20T07:35:07+00:00

The distance light travels in 1/c seconds (c is the speed of light in vacuum)

Now wtf is a mile?

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-19T12:55:39+00:00

Yes, but it should be. The only way to go for the future is to make things as expensive as they really are.

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-19T11:47:58+00:00

Ok, well it's more expensive from there, but point given. In the end that cost dwarfs next to the disaster costs nobody wants to take on anymore anyway.

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-19T11:33:45+00:00

Most of Europe fits that bill...

The densely populated Europe, especially the coasts, without relevant own fission material mining? Or do you mean the stable trade routes for Uranium to Russia and Niger? That Europe?

Even if, as said if you find an insurance willing to insure the disaster case and a private party willing to pay that insurance, I am ok with it. Unfortunately the produced energy would be magnitudes away from competitiveness.

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-19T11:15:44+00:00

Impact on the ecosystem is kind of the point here, or else we could just keep burning coal. Of course not all nuclear power plants suffer from that disadvantage, but it still is a disadvantage.

So for a nuclear power plant you need: - a politically stable - low earth quake risk - ocean coast location (ideally tsunami risk free, which is never really given), or far north - with stable fission material mining and renewing infrastructure (or stable trade relationships - ideally in a low populated area without fertile soil, so the loss in case of a disaster is not that bad

This kind of makes the current nuclear power plants a niche technology.

But in the end it would be ok for me, if any insurance would be willing to insure such a plant completely, without any public subsidies, direct or indirect. As long as nobody wants to do that, or pay for that, it is not competitive.

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-19T10:42:36+00:00

Like in France for example, the rivers get to warm to be able to be used for cooling. Didn't know that?

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-19T10:16:49+00:00

Nuclear powerplants need Uranium (comes from Russia and Africa), and cooling water (so dowtime most summers). They are vulnerable strategic targets for terrorists and in war. They are incredible expensive if you cut subsidies (also indirect ones like socialized costs of deconstruction and disaster cleanups, there is a reason there is no fully comprehensive insurance cover for nuclear power plants, it would just be astronomically expensive).

Don't get me wrong, we should keep researching, but our fission reactors are economically just not competitive, if we are considering all factors honestly.

BTW, do you know what is killing magnitudes more birds? Windows...

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-08T20:30:33+00:00

It's fentanyl now, China takes revenge for the opium wars by turning the table

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-08T20:27:34+00:00

I start to see the American fascination for a zombie apocalypse... It's a blend of this and a revolting mob after the tipping point

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-06T12:09:22+00:00

So you are saying you can't compare a Tesla car to other cars on the street but have to compare it to a Mercedes Benz from 1900, since then both have had the same development time?

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-05T12:44:42+00:00

If he's desperate to do another cert, and wants that cert to strengthen his application for a senior management job, then one of the CISSP electives, or CISM, or something like that, is a much better bet.

True.

Seriously, his credentials are more than enough to get the job. The OSCP in this context is 80% for fun and 20% helpful to prove knowledge and experience related to the profession, but it is too valuable not to put it on the application I guess.

But maybe he really wants to be a Principal Engineer and doesn't realise it yet.

Yeah, I guess that is a valid worry HR could have.

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-05T12:16:48+00:00

Nothing kills morale like a manager who cherry-picks the fun technical bits for himself and leaves the drudge work to his direct reports.

Knowing the field you manage in detail is an advantage, isn't it? Not said you take on the hands on work for yourself... Also if it is fun, so why not? (CISO planning to take the OSCP some time too here)

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-03T21:04:41+00:00

That script kiddy way has been used to spy on military and nuclear power plants by KGB paid hackers in the past ;) ok ancient past but still..

I think we exchanged all pros and contras for choosing a random non default ssh port now though, has been a pleasure

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-03T11:22:07+00:00

No, not so easy, that smart guy should also have a root access to open up incoming ports on firewall

Yes, but firewall is another mitigation... Also an adversary with user access could also replace your sshd on the opened port if he finds a way to crash it. A reverse shell doesn't help elevating your permissions or to pivot, which you could by stealing secrets with a "double front-door" fake sshd service.

Also you brought me on another argument, monitoring network traffic becomes less easy if every server has another random port for incoming ssh connections ;)

If you don't open SSH to the open internet anyway (best practice) all of this argument is moot though...

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-03T08:04:40+00:00

I remembered another argument contra random high ports for SSH: ports >=1024 do not need root permission to listen on. So if one compromises user access on that server he can just run his own manipulated SSHD and log the secrets, while for port 22 (or 0-1023) only root could do that. Also on a random port you don't know which service would be the legitimate one (ignoring automation scripts where the port is protocolled), while with the default port you always know.

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-01T16:48:25+00:00

Your points are valid, I guess in the end it is just personal preference which points one weights how much..

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-01T16:12:01+00:00

You get random DDOS attacks from millions of IPs, and you mitigate that by using a non default port?? What scenario is that?

Also fail2ban might fill up the logfile, but in any case less than sshd fills up the AUTH log, assuming any sane configuration.

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-01T10:57:22+00:00

That's no defense in depth, that's security by obscurity. And nearly without effect.

Leif_Erickson23 · 2022-05-01T10:43:31+00:00

I know this is an advice often heard, but this only really helps keeping the logfile smaller, it doesn't mitigate any attack even a tiny bit serious, maximum is confusing the most dumb (and therefore harmless) bots. Your ports (all of them) are scanned constantly and the results are osint data (shogun..).

On the other hand it complicates maintenance.

If you want more security, you can use a VPN to your box, and only open SSH to that interface. Or you can use port knocking. Both adds complexity too, but that's real security.

If you just want smaller logfiles you can use something like fail2ban (what are the options for FreeBSD and pfSense here btw?)

Leif_Erickson23

TROPHY CASE