well done that man!

For those of us still studying to sit the exam, do you have any advice beyond the usual 'study hard and practice'?

Locomotive,

as several people have stated, 'Don't expect to become an expert over night'.

For a real world example, I started getting interested in computer security at around the same age (around the time I first saw the film 'hackers', I'll hide now... ). I've since spent six years studying computer science at college/university. And I mean computer science, we learnt C, assembly, real-time scheduling, sockets, TCP/IP, etc.etc. not a course in HTML design. Following that I've had a security 'related' role for nearly 3 years.

I'm still yet to crack a real system, but I have spent several times incident handling for clients who have had issues or designing evironments to limit the risk/severity of such incidents.

Oh, and I still don't know jack and still have LOADS of stuff I want to learn (it's why I'm here after all).

Basically, keep at it and try not to take shortcuts, there aren't any.... (if I'm wrong can someone let me know )

ccc,

Welcome to the boards.

Haven't come across this one before. Site looks fairly promising I'll need to take a closer look.

Can anyone with first hand experience of this tool eleborate further?

Biotic,
cheers for the links.

I haven't been able to take too close a look yet (no rest for the wicked and all that) But as you say the videos don't seem constrained to the usual 'type nmap to scan host' basics.

If I find anything majorly interesting after a closer look I'll let you all know

I agree with the above definitions of hacking good, cracking bad. I'd also like to ask 'why do you ask?'

Finally, given the nature of this site, I'd guess that most people here will go with 'hacking good' especially in light of the 'useful' section. If your looking for general opinion you may want to try a less biased source.

Rance,

looks quite nice, I'm a php man myself and the tool fits in nicely with a job I've been putting off for a few weeks. I'll have a play and let you know if I find any issues.

Cheers for sharing

Saw that story a few days ago, couldn't help but laugh.

Reminds me of them getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Just shows that even if it isn't illegal, if it isn't seen as 'right' it is still a good idea to watch your step

SlimJim100,

cheers for sharing, always nice to get a feel how others would handle a situation compared to how I would handle, the switch-to-hub and pentesting a switched environment provided some nice insights.

Kev,

thanks for the advice. I'll edit the splash screens before I fly to be on the safe side.

Do you know how far the airport security can/will go with regard to checking a laptop? I've no problem with booting up to prove it's not going to explode but I'm not sure I fancy an airport 'examination' becuase the security guards get confused when they don't see a Windows flag.

Nice find,

think I'll keep that one bookmarked to review the lists everyone comes up with, might be some nice tips   

Brian,

no offense taken and thanks for the advice.

Regards,
RR

Guys,

thanks for the replies.

Thankfully (for any law enforcement waiting with baited breath anyway) my post was more in line with the way good_4sh interpreted my post. I've got no fancy for being arrested either in the states or anywhere else if I can help it. After the current changes to German laws and proposed changes to the UK's Data Protection Act I just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed similiar scenarios in the States.

I definately wasn't intending taking a crack at anything whilst I'm in the air, don't want to take a swan dive cause the pilot chose 'god' for a password 

Thanks again

Hi Guys,

I've been using this site for a while but have yet to have anything relevant to add to any topic that someone hasn't beaten me to, hence first post.

I reside over the pond and I'm taking a family holiday to the States (Florida) towards the end of the year. As I'm planning to use the flights etc. to get some training and research done I'm concerned that I may fall foul of any laws etc. in the America that I am unaware of.

For reference my main incident response laptop that I will be travelling with has BackTrack 2 installed to the hard disk with a BIOS password to form some level of security (not perfect I know, but no 'real' data gets stored on the machine)

Any advice would be much appreciated,
Role Reversal