It seems that ISI have been criticised over how this was handled.  I recall there was a lengthy dispute between ISI and PVE about the origin of some course material last year.  I haven't been on any of their courses and this is merely an observation ... but is it a coincidence?

Congratulations - I hope that you never have to face that situation again!

I came across an article written by DigiNinja in which he explains what DNS Zone Transfer is and how information gleaned from misconfiguration might be used.  He registered a domain name and set configurations deliberately in order to demonstrate to clients the dangers of DNS Zone Transfer.

I guess that most sites won't allow this so it may not be of use in a day to day pen test but the article, and accompanying site, might help others to learn details of what DNS Zone Transfer is and the pitfalls of misconfiguration.

Exactly, hence the suggestion that this situation is publicised widely, just as Peter decided to make his ongoing situation with Infosec Institute widely known a few months ago.  Obviously, it's up to individuals here on EH.net who use 1and1 to decide whether they plan to continue using them with the possibility that they might pull the plug without any notice.

I realise that this situation is well-known here and many have expressed concern about what has happened but I wonder if this situation should be published more widely in the infosec community.  We all know what happened between Peter and Infosec Institute and that seems to have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

I would have thought that publishing information about MaXe's experience as widely as possible, providing it is correct factually and doesn't stray into the realm of defamation etc. (I have no reason to believe that it would), wouldn't do any harm.

Having seen the comments here about MaXe's former host, I would avoid them even though I note that others' experiences are more favourable.

I'm not saying that I will necessarily be able to help, but can you give examples of how you need to have them renamed, i.e. maybe:

one.txt -----> 1.txt
two.txt ------> 2.txt
three.txt ----> 3.txt
four.txt -----> 4.txt

or

jpvf.doc ------------> 1
wioeprt.rtf ----------> 2
wdopemxs.jpg -----> 3
qwerty.wmv --------> 4

etc.

There have been a couple of segments in recent episodes from Hak5 that dealt with Steganalysis.  Check them out ... the most recent is here.

This sounds an interesting idea.  I'm surprised that the development folks haven't thought about this and implemented it already.  Of course, they might have and discounted it for some reason!

So they didn't get your company's permission first?  Your company didn't engage them?

Isn't that one of the first thing that is drilled into Pen Testers ... get full written consent in advance, along with exactly what you are, and are not, permitted to do etc.?

There's a very recent article about Image and Audio Steganography on Infosec Institute (http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/steganography-tutorial/).  I haven't looked at it in detail, but he uses Linux-based tools when dealing with .jpeg files (as well as .png).  It might be worth your having a look through it.  Perhaps you could post a comment in the thread and the author (a researcher with ISI) might be able to give you some guidance.

I'd recommend that you take a look at the BackTrack forum.  It's a very active community and some there have had similar problems.

I saw this too and hoped to get time to play around in a virtual environment.  I'll be interested to hear how you get on with it.

There are several comments in LaNMaSteR53.blog about this and, in particular, experiences of folks who have tried it out.

I saw a post by Didier Stevens about his White Hat Shellcode Workshop at Brucon.  I realise that shellcode is frequently used for malicious purposes but he's opened a new thought process with this idea.

I've worked through the workshop (all the material is available on his site) and have also used CFF Explorer to rebuild the executables.  I'm considering other white hat uses for shellcode ... does anyone have any ideas?

It's OK for me.  Are you familiar with http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ ?

@WCNA - +1

Peter has posted some more information in the form of a trail of e-mails dealing with this matter.  It seems that he has spent $10,000 already and has been offered $5,000 by Infosec Institute.  I suspect that his funds, compared with a large training organisation such as Infosec Institute, are limted and they might be hoping that he will go away.  It appears that Peter has been wronged ... the question is by whom.  As I said in an earlier post, I am not a lawyer and don't even know if the action would be taken in a Court in Belgium or the US.

I would say that, at the very least, he shouldn't be out of pocket when this matter has been concluded.  Surely someone at Infosec Institute saw the training material before it was delivered to those on the course and recognised it as having been published elsewhere?