By the way,

Is it someone that succeeded any course of rapid reading?

I prefer Backtrack because it is already made, and because I don`t have enough experience I like to try the applications they included on the cd.

About BT final, the problem is with my laptop. A coleague has a laptop with a core 2 dou 8400 CPU and has no problem with backtrack. I gave my virtual machine 800 MB ram, and even that it has 250 MB of memory free it is still extremely slow. I tried BlackBox, but I don`t think that I did it correctly.

Anyway, we have another lapop that is special configured for pentest and I`ll use it for Nessus. The rest of applications I`l use them from my Backtrack 3.

It is slow only after I start the graphical interface.

What solution do you think that will better suit my needs?

Thank you guys for answering

I downloaded the virtual machine and installed it on my laptop. I am using vmware player, Turion 64 TL-60, 2 GB RAM. I don`t know why but backtrack 4 final is running extremely slow (the mouse barely move on the screen, if you open a terminal it takes 20 sec to really open...) .

I tried to use the ISO, started it as a live cd, but it is still slow.

Contrary, Backtrack 3 is running very well.

So, I supose that the final version needs a better CPU, or it is an incompatibility with the video card.

Thank you for the answer. I will look on the both websites.

Lucian

Hello guys,

I would like to have your feed back on a subject I am interested in. During my studies I learn that one of the methods to mitigate risk is to buy insurance. But that was all, I didn’t found more specifications, even after I did some research on net.

So, I would like to ask you if you ever did this; maybe you have some links to companies that sell this kind of insurance (I am interested in companies from Canada), and maybe some case studies.

I imagine that the insurer will ask that the client have some security mechanisms and procedures in place, or even compliance to some standards.
Q: Who’ll check this compliance? Can a 3rd party company to do this?? (It can be a new business for my Co).

How do you make recommendations to the client?
How do you obtain quotes, and more important what can you insure – can you be insured against hacking, or accidental data loss, or…what?

Thanks,
Lucian

I have seen the show.
I am not a soap guy, but I was really moved by this show.
Maybe the fact that I knew one of the heroes made me more sensitive, but I really liked it.

Congratulations Tom, you are a great man!

[/quote]
I'll be interested to know (in due course) if it makes you any more valuable to a potential employer.  Your post has made me decide what my Christmas present to me will be!
[/quote]

I looked at SANS GAWN certification. It appears to be mooore complex, but it is more expensive also (if you'll pay it from your pocket).
This one will open many doors, as there are less than 80 certified guys in the world, and it is a very difficult certification.

I don't think that OSWP alone will bring you a job, maybe for a huge company that has many locations and have to assess them, or as a consultant. I will try the former one, maybe combined with another pentest cert.

I studied for the Shon Harris, 4th edition. I really liked the style, it is clear and concise, and the little jokes at the debut of each chapter will rise your morale for the next pages.
Also, she has a video series, which is good too. I have extracted the audio from them and listen while I was commuting, and in other situations.
The cccure site is very good, but (last year) I found the pro questions being closer to the exam. The medium ones are more for Security+. The moment you'll gonna score around 90% at the pro questions you'll pass the exam without problems.
Good luck.

PS If you want to have an idea about the type of questions look at this questions, they are for the CISM certification:
http://www.isaca.org/Template.cfm?Section=Exam_Information1&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=42005

CISM is a very interesting certification too, and they have the strangest evaluation system.

Same for me. I took it in the idea that it won't be to difficult and I will do it during the summer. Then I had other priorities (renovations, move to the new house...) and I end in doing it just now.
Now, I will try it on the market, to see if it add value to my background.
I really enjoy doing it because is hands on. I am doing Heorot part1 now, and then ... don't know yet.

Good luck to you, too!

Hello,

After studying the Offensive Security’s course, this Friday I passed OSWP exam. I will try to do a little review of both the course and the exam.

The course

I found the course to be very well done; it gives structured information about the subject in an understandable way. It has many videos that present various tools and attacks, and a pdf manual that completes the course.

The manual starts with almost 160 pages of theory covering various subjects: the IEEE 802.11 standard, discussion about wireless networks, and very in depth theory about packets, frames, how authentication and association takes places in different scenarios. The theoretical part ends with a discussion about hardware used: cards, adapters and antennas.

Being an offensive course it covers in depth the Aircrack suite (cca 155 pages), with very much emphasis on: airmon-ng, airodump-ng, aireplay-ng, packetforge-ng, aircrack-ng, airtun-ng, wesside-ng and easside-ng tools. Each module comes with detailed explanations, videos, labs and examples. There are many captured files that can be downloaded, and once opened in wireshark helps you a lot to understand the principles. The others tools from the suite are briefly discussed.

The next big part of the course (~80 pages) covers the attacks against the wireless networks. Here are also videos, examples and “to do” labs that helps the student to understand how to perform the attacks, and how to apply the tools already studied.

The last part of the course discusses in few pages the other tools that can be used in order to do wireless penetration and assessment: Kismet and John the Ripper. Here there are no labs to do.

In conclusion I found the course to be interesting, sometimes fun and I think I learned a lot from it. I would like to see some examples on using John the Ripper, and definitely I would like the course to cover other subjects like Bluetooth, using GPS and some other modern subjects. But, this course is what it pretends to be: and offensive wireless security course.


The exam

After studying the manual and doing a lot of practical exercises I found the exam medium as difficulty. I finished it in 1 ½ hours out of the 4 allocated hours. Without the course maybe I would find it more difficult.
It was an offensive exam, so practically you connect to a machine in their environment, and you are given the challenge to find the keys for different networks.
After the exam you have 24 hours to send them a document containing the keys you have found, and (more important in my opinion) to explain what have you done and how.

Conclusions

For those of you that are interested in this field I certainly recommend this certification. If you want to understand more about wireless networks and how to penetrate them go for the course + exam version. You’ll learn a lot, especially about how to crack a WEP network.

If you are low on money or you consider that you have enough knowledge on the subject go for the exam. At 80$ it is very affordable. Play with your router at home, try to crack all the access control combinations: WEP (with or without clients, open authentication, shared key authentication, hidden ESSID) and WPA PSK. If you can do this you’ll pass the exam.

This certification will give you a formal recognition of your skills and knowledge, and, also, will help the guys from Offensive Security to be better known in the industry, and will supply them the funds necessary to improve and develop their courses.

Best regards,

Lucian

Article here:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/091023/tecnology/net_us_nokia_apple_1

I am kinda disgusted about this. I understand about some patents, but 14...
 What is your opinion??

I doubt that it will remain full open source.
Maybe that it will be a lite version that will be free, but business is to make money 
Hope I'm wrong.

Unfortunately, the ones that will be happy are the bad guys.

Sounds interesting.
Did you asked for the price (online version)??

Thank you very much for the book.
It is impressive the effort you made to do it.
At a first glance I can say that this is not an introductory book; I think it can cover the domain of few graduate courses, but in a very practical way. I definitely give it a deeper reading.
Congratulations for the good job you did.