An update and a useful link

I wanted to post a quick update to let everyone know the why the posts have been few and far in between these last few weeks. The quickie version is long hours at work combined with two sans conferences since my last post in January. Yes, two conferences in two months.

I took the FOR 408 Windows Computer Forensics course in January and the SEC 401 Security Essentials Bootcamp in February. Reviews of both will be coming soon but I loved them both. I’ve also been reviewing some other course content which I may be able to write about soon.

One thing I want to share before I go back to my GCFE studies is a great site I saw a few weeks ago.

One of the most useful parts of my attack-secure.com penetration testing course was the online lab of machines to try to hack. Vulnhub.com is a repository of images that a user can download and practice their hacking skills on. Right now there are five pages of images including some that can be difficult to find. After I’m passed my current glut of SANS material I will definitely spend some time with a few of these distros.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SANS Index How To Guide with Pictures

Image
I got some great advice recently on creating an index for SANS exams and I wanted to write a blog post to share it with others. I took the SANS FOR 508 Computer Forensics course in 2008. It was way over my head but I had a great time and learned a ton. A few months ago I finally decided to go for my GCFA certification. I had four year old material from a course that had been completely revamped and no index. I passed the exam with a score in the 80s but it was a grueling experience. I had to rush on the last part of the exam and never felt comfortable. A few months after my GCFA exam I got an opportunity to attend a SANS SEC 504 class. I really wanted to prepare for my GCIH exam the right way so while I was at the conference I asked several individuals how they prepared their index. Most people told me that their indexes were 8-10 pages. A lot of these people had more SANS certs than I have friends so their methods obviously worked for them. My class had a teaching assistant (also SANS
Read more

Introducing FaviconLocator: The Eazy Button to Searching by Favicon

Image
  Favicons (short for favorite icons) are the cute little pixelated images that appear next to the site name in web browser tabs, bookmarks, etc. In the image below we can see the iconic GitHub logo on their site and the KFC logo on a bucket of chicken on their site. Originally, favicons were designed to add a touch of professionalism and branding, but for anyone who is like me and has over a dozen tabs open at any time, favicons are the only thing displayed and how I navigate tabs. Most of us rely on favicons on a daily basis but many never think of them as a tool we can use in OSINT and CTI investigations. That’s what we’re doing to talk about here as well as introduce a new tool. In addition to branding and aiding in navigation between tabs, favicons can serve as unique identifiers for websites. These unique identifiers can help us: Trace the online presence of organizations and discover obscure digital assets Map the online infrastructure of potential threats Potentially de-ano
Read more

Automating Domain Squatting Detection with DNSTwist and Python

Image
  There’s a good chance that, at some point, you’ve received a spam email with a link that looked close to the name of a popular domain but was just a little off. Payapl.com instead of Paypal.com or similar. Domain squatting is a malicious activity where attackers register domain names similar to legitimate ones. Attackers may use these domains to deceive users into believing they are visiting a legitimate website, which can lead to phishing and other attacks. DNSTwist (available here: https://github.com/elceef/dnstwist ) is a popular tool that helps identify domain names that are similar to a given domain name. It generates a list of potential domain names by applying various fuzzing techniques to the given domain name and then checks if these domains are registered. Check out the list of Bank Of America copycat domains: DNSTwist is an amazing tool that should likely be a part of every organization's Cyber Threat Intelligence monitoring efforts, and I wanted to automate it
Read more