I just received access to the Practice Exams.  We are allowed only 2 Practice Exams for each certification exam.  The GCIH is a 2 part exam, so 2 practice ones for each part.

Hey Guys.

Just wondering, but how frequent do these rootwars happen?  I guess I just assumed it was every Sat at 3pm EST.  I'm in the channel now and it still has the topic being Nov 18th. I assume it's not happening today?

Thanks!

Even though our thanksgiving (Canada) was last month, I'm also thankful to you and for running into this site very recently!  Keep doing what you're doing!

So you didn't find it too hard, eh?  Good to hear.  In my SANS portal, I don't have any Practice Exams. They said they would show up 7 - 10bus days after the conference. So far it's been 8 business days, so I'll wait another couple. Made a mistake, I meant just the SANS GIAC certifications in general.  The conference I just atteneded was the GCIH (Incident Handler & Hacker Techniques). When i get home after work, I just have no idea what to study or how to study.  Guess I'll just skim through the books a bit more.  I know I was having a hard time with buffer overflows.

Thanks.

Thanks for the tip. I have downloaded BackTrack 2.0 Beta and (installed it?) on VMWare from the .iso. I first logged in, did "xorg.conf" then "startx" to hop into KDE. From there, it seems i'm stuck with a 640x480 60Htz display. It also crashed on me when trying to open a term. Not a good sign...

Has anyone taken this cert before?  Not a lot on the web about it, no forums that I found.  Just their website and that's about it.  No practice exams either, so feeling a little nervous about writing it when I don't know what kind of exam it'll be.  Not sure if it's scenario-based mainly, or "know your tools and their syntax" type, etc..  I volunteered for the GCIH (Incident Handler & Hacker Techniques) cert.

Thanks.

I much prefer to use nmap, nessus and metasploit from a Linux shell anyway.  I'm just downloading Backtrack and going to attempt to install it in VMWare.  Has anyone else done this successfully?  Anything I need to know?

Thanks!

Good summary, Chris.  It was awesome!  I've only done 1 hacking challange before (for a SANS cert) but this was very different.  At SANS, we were given an IP addy and told "have at it". This RootWar challange was a lot more defined in what you could use and had available for the hack. So in that regard, it was a lot more challanging.  Can't wait till next Sat.

Thanks for the links and info! 

I'm not sure how many systems I can run in VMWare since I only have 1GB of RAM on my 3Ghz dual-core desktop.  It's currently dual-booting XP Pro and Gentoo Linux. I'd love to get my Gentoo Linux on VMWare with KDE but it just doesn't seem possible. I think I will keep my notebook, dual booting Gentoo & XP Pro (no wireless for some reason on Gentoo though) and my Desktop will have the Host as Gentoo Linux and Guest as: WinXP MCE (for my movies, and basic web surfing), WinXP Pro and Win2K3 Server.

Just in the process of setting up a small home hacking lab with a friend of mine.  He has 3 systems and I have 3 and we'll probably stick VMWare on 2 out of 3 of each set of systems.  What is your preferred O/S to launch attacks from and store your tools on?  What does your hacking lab consist of?

Thanks!