They did not contact me either. I had to hound them every couple of months for a year and a half. I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I'm sure I was a huge pain in the ass but in the end I got what I wanted so whatever.

Definitely very much deserved MaXe. Congratulations! Hardware is so much fun

Congratulations alucian! SANS courses are so addictive...

If it makes you feel better, I had to wait 18+ months to take my February 2011 prize. Don't give up unless the company actually told you they were not going to do it. Good luck!

Just configure the VM's host only so only your computer can communicate with them. The reason is that a network is only as robust as it's weakest link and those VM's are pretty weak. An attacker could use a vulnerable VM as a pivot point to engage attacks against your inner network, and it's likely you will expose systems in other ways. All sorts of reasons to do it this way.

OpenVAS NVT 29,029
Nessus plugins 51,236

It's not a complete apples and to apples comparison as its not a 1:1 mapping of plugins to vulnerabilities but you get the idea.

If you are serious about doing VA work you really need Nessus Pro feed (or another commercial scanner) at a minimum. I'm of the mindset however that a really good pentester could make do with Nmap and if it's a webapp test all you really need is Zap/Burp and a browser. Vuln scanners are a crutch. I still use them, but sometimes I find myself spending more time weeding out false positives and second guessing what I knew already.

That's a nice rig. I'm in the market for a new laptop myself as my aging 17 inch brick is no longer beefy enough and far too heavy. I've always liked the Sagers and may have to pick one up. I have a core i5 Windows slate now, but nothing like a real keyboard/laptop format.

Yeah not all instructors make the effort to get to know their facilitators and interact with them. I'm thinking I know who your instructor was now, having heard that. I will pull bookstore shifts as well (only an issue at the large conferences, no bookstore at smaller regional events) but I typically confined those to only during the breaks and of course initial setup activities. The random errands are just a fact of life at these types of events and is one reason they include OnDemand in the package.

Really? I've found the opposite to be true. Sure you may miss a few minutes here or there but the extra face time with instructors and other facilitators more than made up for the few lost minutes handing out eval forms and course CD's.

• Not sure when the EH-sponsored WiFu class will begin but OSWP soonly (Thanks EH.net!)
• GXPN next spring at SANS 2013 in Orlando assuming I get facilitator slot. Had to resign from STI program to qualify since they said I had to do all my Golds before I was eligible (4-5 Golds by March unlikely).
• OSCP Summer/Fall 2013

Somewhere in there I may try to squeeze in Security-Tube SPSE although I've been debating going back for some remedial programming courses at my community college as well since my degree was a management degree and my code-fu is pretty weak. Then next Fall I'll probably do another SANS Va Beach and will be shooting either for the Defending Web Apps course or the new Advanced Web App Pentest course. In the meantime I have access to a crap-ton of SANS OnDemand courses I (work) just purchased to get our non-security staff trained up in security topics. I know several will probably go unused but I'll be more than happy to pick up the slack, will just have to pay to challenge certs.

Am probably going to wait another year for GSE. I could do the written test now, but my incident response skills have gotten a little rusty and I have some new hires in the next few months that will help me refocus away from the compliance and policy work I've been bogged down in lately.

Alfas are good cards but they are not the only game in town. check out this TP-Link card that Pwnie Express sells. http://pwnieexpress.com/products/tp-link-tl-wn722n-usb-adapter $29.00 802.11n does monitor, master and injection and has an external antenna connector. The best part is it's a stick so I don't have to get all funky with the wire ties or velcro to strap an Alfa to my tablet when I'm warwalking.

Along these lines, think about why you want to ban cellular phones or whether the intent is consistent. What I mean by this, do phones represent the only avenue of exfiltration for the data you are trying to protect and are you considering other vectors as well? Camera phones are a great example. I worked in healthcare for about 6 years (not currently) and a common policy for the health depts I audited was not allowing cellular phones in common areas, or disabling camera function on enterprise smartphones. Yet there was no policy governing digital cameras. This is an example of where application of controls are not consistent with the intent of the control. Just something to think about.

The way I see it your 2 most realistic options:

Physical security looking specifically for those things at the door if your security needs justify going to those length.

Using RF mechanisms via Bluetooth, WiFi or NFC at key ingress and egress points and potentially throughout the facility. Obviously turning off a device would prevent that from being effective but sometimes the low tech option is the best.

Have to reinforce with policy of course

I suppose you could also implement a reward system for reporting policy violations if you want to build that type of culture. I'm not sure I like those programs though to be honest.

I'm definitely looking forward to the course. (WiFu) Thanks so much Don for thinking of me and it's a nice validation of my participation here. Grats to all the winners.

That's awesome Hayabusa. I voraciously consume anything I can on web services. They are so prevalent and so shite half the time. Even great courses like SANS that list web services in the syllabus only spend 15 minutes or so on the topic. I was hoping the Mobile Pentest course (SEC575) I took in August would dig into it a bit but it really didnt. Lame. I'm still working up a review for that course btw. Looking forward to the dialogue on this topic. There's such a lacking of tools here for this stuff.