Updated the homepage with a mostly pre-made theme available here.
I posted the changes I made on github but I would really enjoy removing the javascript all together so that the site would be friendly for NoScript users. I found a good resource to get rid of javascript in this repo called You-Dont-Need-Javascript.
Managing the VPS instance that hosts this site has proven to be a learning process as well as practicing more with the LAMP stack as well as other projects that I will make sure to document here.
Other than that I have been working on my lab environment for studying towards CSA+ as this certification would renew my Security+ as well as my A+.
This is the current inventory of my ProLiant DL380 G7 lab environment spec’d at 8x E5640 @2.67GHz with 192GB of ECC DDR3 and a 2tb RAID 6 array for storage. The general outline I am using named AVATAR is available for now gratis courtesy of da_667 but it is set to be for sale after publishing. Visit https://blindseeker.com for more information
I have been having some trouble getting Pfsense to bridge the virtual networks that I have created for these machines so the IPS and SIEM can work together to detect and report the attacks that will take place on the Metasploitable machine from the kali machine. Currently pfsense is running 3 networks: em0 which is the /23 off of the static IP allocated to the server, em1 which is considered the LAN network at 172.16.1.1/24 and lastly em2 which is OPT1 at 172.16.2.1/24. Aside from this I have the vmware vswitches vSwitch0, Management, IPS 1, IPS 2 and Bridge which acts as a bridge back to the static IP that is allocated to the baremetal esxi host. The way the network is intended to run is to have Management and IPS operating independently of each other with pfsense acting as the firewall so the traffic from the machines inside of the IPS network doesn’t leave. The SIEM and IPS management reside on the Management side of the Pfsense gateway and the IPS resides with Kali and Metasploitable on the IPS network. The problem I am having is that the management group isn’t able to exit the hypervisor and I am not sure if the configuration error is in the pfsense or layer 3 side vs the virtual switch or layer 2 side. I am currently checking my configuration to see if I can spot anything that is glaring incorrect. If I am not able to I will just place the machines on the same virtual network with no bridge and thus the chaos will be contained to the virtual networks I have created.
The exam objectives for CSA+ are Threat Management, Vulnerability Management, Cyber Incident Response, and Security Architecture and Tool Sets. These exam objectives seem broad and almost seem to encompass much of the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification as well as the more defensive approach. No books have been published on this certificate as it was released on the 15th of February of this year AKA a week ago. This hands on approach should be adequate in order for me to earn the certificate by October of this year or roughly 7-8 months and I look forward to documenting my path to earning it.