Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Batter Up! CCNA

I am now working on my CCNA.  This is 4 years in the making.  I should have had this in 2006 but I stopped for work.  Instead, I worked on getting my RHCT.  I do not regret it since it helped a lot with Linux education.  I have a firm grasp of redhat AS and centos because of it.  But it is 2011, I need to get this done.  I am definitely doing self study since I know I am not paying 3000 dollars for a class room and I know my company is not paying for it.  Something that held me up was the $500 or so that is needed for the equipment but I am going to use GNS3.  It is an emulator which can map out an entire environment full of routers and switches.  For further research, go to the site, http://www.gns3.net/.  Warning: you will need to have the cisco IOSs' already in your possession in order for you to use it.  I am sure people can find a way to get that.  I mean it is for your education.

I also bought the book, Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide, Sixth Edition, by Todd Lammle.  I also bought a book in 2008, Network Warrior, by Gary Donahue.  I remember liking the book very much but it was unfortuanate that I did not have enough hardware.  I want to read both books with the virtual environment I create.  I know I will still have to buy the hardware but I do not think it is necessary for this exam.  I know I will need it to do the CCNP which I do not mind.  I actually I want to do that. I will even buy a rack for it, I am sure.

This is the next step on my journey to become a great pen-tester and some day, a leader/CEO of a security firm.  The industry is changing.  It is becoming more and more perilous to ignore the dangers of technology.  I would love to be one of the good guys researching solutions to problems and using technology to warn people of the vulnerabilities of their home and organization. 

Anyway, enough dreaming, I am currently going through the commands since I have been through subnetting already.  I will try to keep my blog posts up during this process but no promises.  I want to get this done before December since the OSCE is calling me.  I still fuzz random software.  I want to some day work on 0-days too.  Have to start somewhere. I hope to follow this blueprint but maybe not to the letter: http://infiltrated.net/pentesting101.html.





OSWP Final

Well, I have finally taken the exam for the Offensive Security Wireless Professional.  It was definitely an eye opener.  I understand why so many people say it is outdated, but if you look at the SSID's of your neighborhood, you will see quite a few WEP authenticated/encrypted networks.  Anyway, before I took the exam, I practiced a lot from the labs till I got to the point I could identify what was needed without looking at anything.  In addition, my co-worker even gave me a network to try to crack: an ad-hoc network.  I could not seem to inject into the network but I could sniff the network long enough to crack it.  I could not even de-authenticate the clients of the ad hoc network.  However, it was fun to try every option to crack it. 

I cannot talk much about the exam but I can tell you that if you can do everything in the course, you can pass the exam in the 4 hours that they give you.  I stumbled on one section but eventually got it.  After you pass the exam, they give you the option to get access to their OSWP forum which is pretty cool.  It is the same access that you get when you pass the OSCP.  Overall, I love the course.  I do wish they had more on WPA2 (psk/enterprise) networks, rainbow tables, cowpatty, GPS options, bluetooth and access points attacks.  I did read that they are working on an update to the course.  I will give that a look in the future especially if it offers cracks for bluetooth.  For now, I would suggest this course to anyone who wants the fundamentals of wireless cracking.  You can always expand your knowledge with further research.  They even give you the links for it.