Stolen Laptops and Data

It seems like daily I hear about security breaches, laptops being stolen. All this personal information is being leaked. I dont understand why people dont use encryption ? I admit it seems daunting, but there are programs out that now that require you to click a button. Its that simple. But what standard do you encrypt with ? I personally like AES which stands for Advanced encryption standard. It is FIPS compliant another lovely acronym that stand for federal information processing which means the goverment uses it to secure unclassified data.

If you want to know the ins and outs of the algorithihm here is a paper published by NIST.

AES Text

After finishing the document, I feel like I need another Red bull.

It talks abouts ciphers, bits, plaintext and other goodies. A knowledge of C C++ or Unix is helpfull. There are alot of functions.

XOR is used in the algorithim to encrypt plaintext into ciphertext.

The cipherkey itself can have lengths of 128, 192 or 256 bits.

There is to much math for me, gives me a headache, although I can understand some of the code.

Microsoft Presentation

We had Microsoft come out to our office to show us Vista. It looks clen but the hardware requirements are going to require allot of people to upgrade. Thats good new to me but bad for consumers. Personally I love Linux. Vista looks allot like OS X. Apple's OS.

There are some new security feautures including a way to encrypt directories and filesystems. When I asked what encryption protocol would be used, I did not get an answer. That's marketing for you. I also read that Microsoft released 12 security alerts. 8 are critical. You can read about the here .

Goals and Career

I currently work for a large IT company consulting enterprise accounts on hardware software needs. I'm working on obtaining my Associates degree and have decided that my major is going to be information assurance. (IT Security). I plan on studying for my CCNA and have a goal of obtaining it by January of 2007. After I complete my self-study. I will go after my CISSP. Currently I'm a MCP or Microsoft Certified Proffesional.

Here is a sample of the courses:

Bachelor of Science - 127-128 credits

Programming and Computers - 25 Credits
CT-115 Introduction to Programming	3
CT-152 Introduction to Unix Completed	3
CS-130 Computer Science Fundamentals I	4
CS-220 Database Management	3
CS-230 Computer Science Fundamentals II	3
CT-301 Website Construction	3
SE-301 Software Engineering	3
SE-458 Senior Design Project	3
Computer Security - 18 Credits
CS-356 Web/CGI Programming Using PERL	3
CS-418 Operating Systems	3
NS-201 Network Security Protocols and Administration	3
NS-351 Secure Website Administration **	3
NS-352 Unix Administration and Security ***Completed	3
NS-401 Network Security Theory and Algorithms	3
Mathematics and Sciences - 21 Credits
MA-114 Algebra and Trigonometry	4
MA-124 Discrete Mathematics	3
MA-128 Introduction to Statistics	3
MA-261 Calculus I	4
MA-262 Calculus II	4
Science elective (1)	3
Telecommunications and Networking - 6 Credits
TC-110 Introduction to Telecommunications	3
CT-240 Internetworking with Routers and Switches	3
Management - 6 Credits
MIT-201 Introduction to E-Business Completed	3
MIT-208 Internet and the Law	3
Humanities/ Social Sciences - 19 Credits
FS-100 Freshman Seminar	1
HU-331 or HU-332 Arts and Ideas	3
SS-351 Ethics	3
Humanities/History/Philosophy electives (2)	6
Social Sciences electives (2)	6
English Communications - 9 Credits
EN-101 English Communications I	3
EN-102 English Communications II	3
EN-408 Writing Seminar in Technical Research	3
Technical Electives - 24 Credits
Technical electives (6)	18
Technical electives (2) - must be 300 or above	6

Final Project for Internet Technologies Class

My final project is about having a Internet presence. I already have this blog up, so I'm going to point a link here to my blog. This was my first online class and I enjoyed it. I will be taking critical thinking in August for my next online class.

I also have some articles that I have written that I would like to share with my classmates here is the link.

I also have a business website I made called Phuture Networks.

I have also beent thinking about doing some security podcast's. I keep up with numerous RSS feeds in my Firefox browser. I had a great time with this class and encourage my classmates to keep in touch. I can be emailed at phuturegenius@yahoo.com

A new Morning

It has been some time since my last post, things have been great. My son was born on May 5, he is awesome, most of my time now consists of working, and spending time with my family. Time management skills are in order here. There is so much going on in the IT industry. I like the fact that Apple has released a new Macbook. Its Intel Dual Core,and goes for $1099. I'm in the process of seeking for a new laptop. I have one, but could see myself owing 3. One for the windows platform, anohter for Apple Mac OS and well a third for Unix. Why ? Not only because Im a geek, but I write, try to code and just now getting into photos. I found my dads old 35mm. He is no longer around. So I like photography now. Some many gadgets to get, baby formula to buy. I feel like there is not enought time in the day. Not to mention blogging, soon podcasting. Well thats it today folks have a great one !!!!

The mischief makers BOTS

Bots can be automated to do just about anyhing, there really just scripts that are deisgned to do do network snooping. Here is the scenario, a new exploit is announced online, within minutes a cracker firs up his *nix box, code some PERL and bingo, this script is sent loose to probe networks looking for vulnerable PC's and delivering the result to a system in Finland.

First step is to keep your updates current, run a firewall, and dont use file sharing networks. I cannot stress this enough most malware comes thru those networkds even with Spyware running.

Phishers and VOIP

Now it seems that Phishers are reocrding automated services with VOIP, just imaagine calling into Bank Of America, your call is routed over a VOIP network and someone is on the the line with a digital recorder. Man does that suck, Im sure they already nknow how to decoded DTMF codes to get your banking account number. My suggestion get PGPhone, its a product that will encrypt your Voip traffic. That way they can try to do cryptanalysis and by the time they crack (they wont) You will no longer even need a bank account.

Search Engine Marketing Job

Well things are changing for the better in my life, I got a new job placing ads in search engines thru Yahoo Search Marketing and Google Adwords.Its a cool company too. I cannot beleive how much money is in the industry, and all the new stuff I'm learning about. The biggest issue? Click Fraud. There is alot but not as much as people think.

I'm currently learning about Google's API's and plan on taking PHP next semester. Everything is going webbased. This is cool and scary at the same time. Most of the stuff on the net is vulnerable on the net there are exploits posted daily. How much stuff of mine do I really want on the web? Besided this and a couple of other blogs not much.

What Linux Live CD's are good for security?

I use Whoppix alot, it is a great CD, with alot of good tools, categories include penetration testing, wireless testing, it has compilers being that is Linux, it has a ton of usefuill perl scirpts and a vulnerability DB.

You can find it here:

Apple and Dual Boot

This is great, but why not triple boot? I know its possible, what if I want to run Windows 2000 Mac OS X.. and BSD or any flavor of Linux? I like many operating systems for many different reasons. Im looking at VMware so I can run virtual machines to test code in a controlled enviroment. I want to analyze malware and peek beneath the hood to see what functions and system calls it might be trying to access.

Microsoft now offers a virtual server, for free :) I like free stuff Go open source. I have not tested it yet. Im curious to see how stable it is lol.

Pay Per Click Management

I have created another blog for my day to day activities at a PPC management firm I work for check it outby clicking on the title Pay Per CLick Management.

DRM- Digital rights management

The word for the day is Digital Rights Management
Is it ok to burn and copy music or to use servies for Limewire? I know it's illegal. I cant think of someone nowadays that does not burn music, I personally notce everything that I read I can find online and it usually more up to date.

The copyright protection schemes will continue to be cracked. Is it of any use?

DRM is used on DVD's, product activation, and digital water marketing.

Adware

I hate Adware, I'm always looking for great tools to get it removed. Here is a great adware and spyware remover.If your PC is running slow, or downloand alot of music, I recommend checking this out!

No Adware

Krav Maga

Today I woke up and went to my first Krav Maga class.It was fun and a great workout. They also played really cool music which was a plus. I have been blogging alot I have three blogs up currently and one website. I have decided to blog my classes online, not only for a learning experience, but to rehash my studies and to give back to the online community. My classes this semester are HTML and Ecommerce.

Southern California Linux Expo

Well SCALE is around the corner. Im excited, I think I'll drag my girlfriend along with me to introduce her to Linux. She uses MS Windows which I do as well at work and at home. I use Linux as well. I prefer Linux for the reason that so much good software is availiable and its free. I also have my choice of compliers ready at my disposal.

What is SCALE? Click on the link above to check it out.

This is my plan:

These are the talks I will be attending.

Day 1

A Look at the Current and Future Face of PHP
Lunch
Fighting Spam using Linux and Open Source Tools
phpWebSite Open Source CMS
Linux Network Security

Day 2
Performance Tuning Linux Applications With DTrace
So you want to be a consultant
Exhibiton
New Features in MySQL 5.0, 5.1, and beyond

Department of Justice VS. Google

The Department of Justice wanted access to search queries on Google. The DOJ asked Google to release search records for a particular week. Then they asked for a list of all URL's indexed in Google. This is insane thats like over a billion URL's.

Google said no.

Yahoo did release search results. No personal information was released.

AOL did comply. No personal information released as well.

Sunday

Its Sunday morning, I got up early lifted some weights and got my car washed. Then me and my girlfriends made a trip to Costco to return a DVD/VCR combo. We already have one. There was no problem with the return which was nice.

We are now watching Lord of War with Nicholas Cage. It 's about a gun runner, I like it. I will probably be going back to Blockbuster today to return the rest of the movies. I also rented Pirates of the Silicon Valley, its about the making of Apple and Microsoft. Its also good. It shows how crazy Steve Jobs actually was. I dont know if he still is :)

Back to School

I have enrolled back into school I'm taking HTML and Ecommerce, lets see how I can profit from this.

Thursday Morning

I decided to take the rest of the week off for vacation. I will be bloging and gaming. I'm going to go see Narnia later today, which should be cool. I will be posting a review about it today.

Yet another blog I started

I have started a new blog to test out WordPress. Here is the link: http://phuture.wordpress.com. Why did I decide to try Wordpress? Why not. Its free currently for a lite version and the interface is clean and simple to use. This is very important to me. Dont get me wrond I feel comfortable in any *nix shell enviroment and can move around but I think about other people who are lacking the skills in the computer department.