Author: Christopher Truncer

Network+ Certified!

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Well, I am now glad to report that I am also Network+ certified!  I went to go take the test on Monday this week, and I did pretty well.

It was interesting comparing this test to the Security+.  In the Security+, I was able to take the whole test, just blow right through it and do really well.  On the Network+, the first 10 questions I had were the toughest.  My first thought was, “Wow, I had really studied, and I knew all the material, what’s going on?  This is going to be close.”.  But after the first 10, I pretty much just got into a groove and was able to go through the rest of the test with no issues.

So, now I’m taking a break.  But, I have a feeling at the end of this first week, I’m just going to get started studying for my next certification.

Next up… Certified Ethical Hacker

My future plans…

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I’ve had some time now since I’ve been Security+ certified, and I’ve been trying to think about the next steps that I am going to take.  Largely, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on what it is that I want to do specifically with IT in the future.  I know that I want to do something relating to security within IT.  A dream job would be part of a company or owning my own that was involved in penetration testing and IT/Network/Business security auditing.

Knowing this, I’ve been trying to plan what certifications might help provide a good demonstration of my background knowledge that would be applicable to the job.  First things first, I am going to get my Network+ before the end of the year.  After taking the Security+, the Network+ does seem to be very similar.  I’ve taken a practice test and it seems the only area that I am specifically need to work on is knowing the protocols for routing.  Once I get this information down, I don’t think there should be a reason that I can’t pass it fairly quickly.

Once I have this, I am going to start studying for the CEH certification (Certified Ethical Hacker).  I’ve come from a background in security, as it has always been something that I have been interested in.  I’ve briefly looked over the certification and it seems that it is a lot of things that I already have had some exposure to.  I do not think that this would be a significant challenge to learn.

Finally, once I have received all the previous certifications, my big certification that I want to go after is the CISSP.  This is the big security certification that you can get.  Having this would provide major credibility to myself, and it is something that I really want to get.  I think I will look into taking a class, along with some book studying as well.  This is very in depth about all formats of security, and would definitely require a good amount of knowledge.  However, since it is something I am very interested in, I have no doubt that I will be able to become CISSP certified.

Security+ Certified!

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So, as you all know I have been studying for the Security+ for the past month roughly. This past week, with two weeks left in my class, I just felt that I really knew all the information we had previously gone over, and all the upcoming information. So instead of just sitting there, I figured, why not just try taking the test, and see where I’m at?

Went on a rainy Thursday morning, walked right in, sat down, and 25 minutes later came out a Security+ certified professional!

It was interesting, I felt that for almost every question, I was able to eliminate 2 of the 4 possible answers, so if I didn’t know it, I nearly always had a 50/50 shot at getting it right.

Anyways, I walked away with a score of 845 out of 900, and a big weight off of my shoulders.

Security+ Update

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Well, I’ve been “going” to the virtual class for about three weeks now.  We meet twice a week for 3 hours.  This class in all honesty is pretty easy.  Well, I guess that would be attributed to the certification itself.

In the end, I know I could have definitely taken the test and received the Security+ certification without having to go through the class.  Really, all that is being done is the instructor is just reading through the book, which I can do myself.  But, I guess it doesn’t hurt to have an instructor.

The only thing I really need to focus and remember are the encryption algorithms.  How many bits each one is, and if it is asymmetric or symmetric.  Besides that, all the concepts that the book presents seem very straight forward and logical.

I believe the class is going to be sending out our vouchers very soon.  Hopefully I get it this week.  If I can, I’ll take a few more practice tests (already getting 85%) and as long as I stay around the same score, I’ll just go take the exam early, and be done with it.  Not much of a point of sitting for a few more weeks to learn things I already know.

Well, we’ll see, and hopefully I’ll be certified shortly!

Security+

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For the past week and a couple days I have been studying for the Security+ exam.  I’ve been going through a couple books, websites, and practice tests to get ready, and my work actually has sent me to a class to get ready for the exam.

After going through the books, and the start of the class, I feel I probably could have got this done without going to the class.  The first chapter, and the first day of our class, was learning what updates are, hot patches, service packs, etc.  It was a little funny to learn that, should probably be common sense if you are going for the Security+ cert, but still a good review.

Tonight we are about to have our second class, and I am looking forward to it.  My only weak area (from what I can tell after taking practice tests) seems to be the memorization of things, such as how many bits are in a specific encryption algorithm.  Short of that, all the concepts I feel are straight forward and make sense.

Tonight will be the end of week 1, with 5 weeks to go.  Looking forward to getting through the class, and getting the cert.

Brewmaster!

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So yesterday was an interesting day for me as I did something I have
never tried before. Brewed my own beer!

Homebrewing is something I’ve been interested in trying, but just
never actually have been able to do it. Well, for an early birthday
present, the girlfriend bought me this great home beer brewing kit.
Needless to say, I was interested in giving this a shot.

After checking we had everything, we started our brew. We had a ton of
spices, hops, and extracts to mix together. We started off with mixing
water with the spices, then adding the extracts, and following that up
with adding hops at specific times.

Initially, the spices and water put off almost an oatmeal type of
smell. After adding the hops, it was definitely given an IPA style
smell with a very small hint of almost some sort of fruit.

Once everything was together, we added it to our Carboy (glass jug
that holds the beer) to let it ferment for a couple weeks. Now, every
few seconds we hear bubbles escaping the carboy which is the yeast
fermenting the beer, and CO2 escaping.

It was nearly a 4 hour project, but that could get cut to a shorter
time if we were able to heat up the water faster. It was definitely
pretty interesting to do, and I’m looking forward to what it tastes
like.

What’s next:

After a couple weeks, take the beer out of the first carboy, and move
it to the second one for secondary fermentation.

We then follow that up with bottling it, and then drinking it a week later.

I’ll be sure to report back the progress.

Working to choose…

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Well quite honestly, I’m a little disappointed in the lack of updates that I have on here.  This is my first step to work to change that.

To be honest, I am trying to decide which project to delve into.  There are so many things that I want to do, but we all only have so much time.  There’s iPhone development (of course for only jailbroken iPhones), web development, and just learning to mess with more things i.e. different linux distros, security auditing tools, console modifications, everything!

My goal is to keep this up to date with what I am currently working on.  Unfortunately, it seems that I like to jump from project to project quite quickly, and I should work to start a project to the finish.  It seems that right as I get into something, a team needs my assistance with their project and that leads to others, leaving my personal undertakings just hanging.

I also want to use this almost as a project log to document all my findings on everything I work with, find interesting, and think is worth posting.

Hope you all will enjoy, and I’ll do my best to make this worthwhile.

New Project – One to choose

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Well, this will be a blog to discuss my thoughts on everything IT.  I mean, everything.  I believe that I have experienced almost everything that IT has to offer whether that be security, IA, dev work, hacking, pen testing, design, 3d design, and more.

At the moment, I believe I will use this to document my current project, a project I will open source when finished.  I want to make a URL shortening web application that users can install on their own domain.  I know of one other current application that does pretty much the same thing, but I just thought, why not?  It will be an interesting project in a new language for me (PHP).

At worst, no one will use it, and it’s no skin off my back.  But atleast it gives users a choice… and choices aren’t a bad thing.