I wonder if they just work 9 to 5. If they are working 24/7, thats 5 people per position, so a team of 6 always on duty. 6 people is what? The size of a rather large assessment team? This is probably the 6 guys who watch the Great Firewall of China server logs.
IA certs are useful as an engineer if you're looking at government work. If you even come close to the security aspects of the DoD'ish type work, you really must have DoDD 8570 certification. Most people interpret that to be a CISSP, however there are MANY certs that you can/must have in 8570. If the company thinks you even might work on a government contract, they'll look for 8570 certification because it'll be levied by the government. I'd recommend at the least being Security+ (IAM/IAT Level 2) certified. You can also add some of the specialization certs (such as Security Management or incident handling) or OS certs. Those make you a much easier hire.
I would personally consider setting up a simple VPN. Anyone that needs to use the server can VPN into a small LAN first and then connection.
On the other side, you can nat 21 and 22 off to a different computer. Run honeyd on that computer and simply capture everything to 21 and 22. it'd take more work to actually do something with what you capture, but you'll have some fun stuff to look at every once in a while.
I've actually been doing this for years. A few things to note:
The computer should probably not go in the entertainment cabinet. It's hot. It's noisy and it looks out of place. Plus, when you want to fix something in it you can't get to it. Instead, cut a grommit in the wall and place the computer somewhere else, (mine is in the closet downstairs immediately below the entertainment center). You can buy an HDMI extender that uses 2 Cat6 cables for $50 and self-powered USB extenders as well.
The most important thing to wide-spread acceptance is the keyboard/mouse combo you use. It needs to fit in to an entertainment center. And it needs to be a keyboard/mouse. Don't use a computer remote. please understand keyboards and mice. They have no clue what the buttons on a computer remote do to the computer. I personally love my 2 DiNovo Minis. (I have 2 entertainment centers this way.) There are some cheaper keyboard/mouse remotes these days. Also, you can use the keyboard/mouse apps for ipods/pads/phones (though those have been sketchy for me).
I'd recommend running both an HDMI and a USB cable to the entertainment center. Actually, go DVI if you have the option. The encryption on HDMI can make it sketchy, especially for audio. Off of the USB cable, plug in a USB hub. Now you can plug your dongle for your keyboard/mouse combo, you can add a USB sound card and bypass the HDMI, you can add a DVD/Bluray drive, a media card reader, a place to plug in a USB stick. All come in very handy.
Skip the programs designed for home theaters! You and everyone you know knows how to use a computer with a keyboard and mouse already. They can work iTunes, they understand internet explorer, they don't need a fancy overlay that somehow makes things more accessable. Anyone who can't use the normal windows interface is definitely NOT going to figure out the obscure software you're planning on using.
Bookmark all the media pages. ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, CW (maybe), southparkstudios, comedy central, adult swim, hulu, netflix, etc, etc, etc. From there, you'll always be able to watch what you want.
And buy a normal over-the-air antenna. Trust me, it's worth it. If you order online you can get a decent antenna and possibly some other equipment to go with it for under $100. And when you want to watch the live results of Dancing with the Stars, that NFL game, or Wipeout in extremely beautiful full HD, you'll be happy you have it. Plus you can wire put an amp on it and patch it back into your house cable to watch on the other TVs in your house.
Buy a full computer. Don't get all fancy with a super duper mini computer or an expensive home theater case. You are going to put it out of the way anyway so it really doesn't matter what it looks like. And at some point you're going to need to fix something, (a network card, a video card, etc) so you're going to want to be able to crack it open. I bought a slim Acer something-or-another for $300 and it works great. (I also have a $400 HP that was a cheapo one and it has been nothing but a pain in the ass. All cheap parts in it.)
These notes are all from about 6 years of experience doing this with multiple computers, multiple keyboards/mice, and multiple setups. I tried it fairly unsuccessfully for about 3 years before that. I've tried about everything and the above notes are hard won from the 9 years of experience.
This story is irrelevant. When was the last time your time in the air was the longest portion of your flight? Why is it important to have extremely fast spacecraft? Does it matter if they get there a day later? Why is a super fast spyplane important if you can use satellite imagery or local assets which can then beam you the information in real time?
The fact is, the reason we've slowed down is because we realized we prefer to be more efficent than really really fast. Just look at your processor. It doesn't clock faster, but it does more work and costs you less power. I don't think I can think of a single reason where increasing human speed directly equals increasing benefit. (And don't site that 14 hour flight to china. You were going to spend the first day aclimating anyway.)
When you think about it, there's one device that has VERY similar hardware to an airport express... your cell phone. (processor, wifi, audio out). An android app implementing this would breath new life into almost any old cell phone. Now that old G1 you lovingly gave up can take on a new life as your audio interface. Here's to hoping some intelligent developer decides to make this happen. I'd certainly buy it.
My guess is it's a combination of waiting for transistor transitions to occur as well as power consumption. The speed of light or the distance things have to travel really isn't the issue. (i.e. there are multiple things that run at 5ghz, just not CISC processors usually.)
To be completely honest, I'm too lazy to download it off bit torrent. If I want to watch it I'll either get it off netflix or buy it off something like amazon.com. This probably isn't a big enough movie to move me to hit the redbox for it.
I suppose I'm representative of a lot of 30-something's. I've got an income. I've got more responsibilities than I care to deal with. My time is precious and I'm more than willing to trade a few bucks to plop down on the couch, pull up the app, and start the movie playing.
I think a lot of time games try to make your individual decisions important. I don't think that is really a good idea. While it happens in the real world, it is normally considered luck. If you have no reason to know the outcome of your actions, (good or bad), then the fact that something happens down the road is not a direct result of you. You could have been a random number generator.
What I think is better is how your decisions add up in aggregate. In MMOs, and RPGs there are many times 'factions' where each action you take pleases some people and angers others. In everquest, there were zones (PoG) where certain classes wouldn't kill anything because the faction decreases caused them to be unable to participate in their class. Similarly in RPGs, you can make friends with different factions and alienate factions which can lead to everything from higher prices on goods, inability to access quests, and outright hostility by a NPC that might otherwise have sold you a loaf of bread.
Additionally, in most games, there is something you can do to get back in the good graces. Normally it is tedious, monotinious, and takes a long time. This is how it should be. You screw up? You pay your dues.
Ultimately, making very random, minor actions at the beginning of a game turn in to game changing problems later doesn't benefit anyone any more than a guy choosing to stay home and having his house get hit by an airplane does. (And I appologize for the poor spelling throughout this post.)
I run VMWare ESXi. It works great for basic tasks.
Remember though, the same way VMWare 'hooks' companies they'll hook you too. You want to back your VMs up? Thats hard without paying for it. You want to transfer VMs between servers or manage multiple servers? Thats a pay option too.
Also, disk storage on ESX is a horrible pain. Local storage or iSCSI are you only two real choices. No USB which will be a HUGE problem once you want to start backing things up or moving VMs around.
I haven't used XEN (though I'm highly motivated to try it...)
Vmware is fun and great for a play lab, but for your servers you want to make it through a hard drive failure and hardware upgrades? Be careful. The devil is in the details.
I prefer the updates, "OMG pray for me to get through this", "wow, just wow", and "I'll get through this". To everyone who's posted those, "NO. I WILL NOT ASK WHAT YOU ARE REFERING TO!"
I run the exact same thing, (well, OpenSolaris on the smb server). However, my windows 7 computer is downstairs while the TV i supstairs. I ran a long (30-40ft I think) VGA cable along with a USB cable (2 16ft cables that included a build-in signal repeater powered from the USB) from the room with the computer to the entertainment center. At the entertainment center, VGA goes into the TV, USB goes into a usb hub. The USB hub has a extigy usb soundcard (connected to the sound system) and a logitech diNovo mini keyboard/mouse.
This setup works great. My wife is not a tech time but loves it because she can watch her netflix and abc.com shows easily. She can also browse the web/etc. There's something to be said for the windows interface. With a good wireless keyboard/mouse combo (like the diNovo) people are familiar with windows and have no problem navigating it on a 50" tv. People find most set-top boxes or fancy media center interfaces to be foreign and shy away. However, they know what a keyboard and mouse is and they know what windows is and can use both.
I have been waiting for this type of device for a long time... I think it's probably better off in a 5-6in version but thats minor. However, I'd like to see 2 additional things:
one screen using color e-ink. I want at to be able to go down to 1 screen with no backlight for high ambient light or low battery uses. Make it the keyboard side. I don't care. Just give me the best of both worlds.
An operating system optimized for touch that still includes the underlying OS strength. Android. Rooted iOS. A new, optimized version of windows 7. Whatever. But I don't want to use either a legacy OS that adds touch as a layer on top. I also don't want to use an app based OS that doesn't allow me to go into command line mode when I want to get sticky.
We're soooo close to the digital everything assitant (similar to what courier promised), but I expect it'll be 18 more months before we see really solid solutions in this area.
Still, I want a little thing I carry around (like my iphone) with a ton of apps that I can pop in and out of to take care of all those little things i need assistance with hour to hour.
However, when I want to hunker down and troubleshoot my network, I want to be able to flip over and use all my solid network tools that require a computer to act like a computer. I think in some ways thats the promise of android or windows 7 if it receive a solid UI refresh. However, the devices aren't there yet. You're either a phone/tablet focused at apps, (the mini-games of work). Or your a netbook and up (Full games from Portal up to Oblivion). I want both!
I agree with both parents. The laws of armed conflict must be extrapolated from the physical world to the logical one if the US is going to combat it's enemies. They are already attacking in ways that would be unacceptable in the physical world, yet our laws have not caught up with them.
Who here believes that if there was a foreign mititary trying to enter the country through some guy's private beach or some rancher's land, the federal government wouldn't give a second thought to sending the military onto that piece of land to defend it, (and the civilian welcoming it)? That has to apply in the digital world as well. If your personal network is contested battle space, the government isn't going to give it to the enemy just because you are our citizen and not the enemy's.
I know it isn't popular, but I honestly like Bing. It's actually frustrating to see things go back and forth between yahoo and google without consideration of Bing. I very much wish I could get Bing as the default safari engine on my ipod. Sometimes I wonder why the requirement for search selection isn't pushed on people the way browswer selection is in Windows.
(Disclaimer: Not a windows fanboy. Currently running ubuntu, debian, osx, windows, cisco ios, opensolaris and bsd through freenas at home.)
I've listened to his talks before, and this is what he does. He's incredibly good at bypassing chip security and reading out the data on the chips. The question though is do you have to do that every time, or did he find a bug in the code on the chip that could potentially be exploited externally. The article is a bit vague on that. All it really sais is he was able to tap the chip bus. It doesn't comment on the impact of him doing so other than it compromises the whole chip.
I can guarantee you, no-one has any love for contractors wasting money. It means the goverment person on the other side gets less. And while someone has some big, ephemeral budget, the guy managing the line item has much less and wants to get everything out of it he can.
That said, the US is paying attention to trends in ballistic missiles. Look up the brand new Ballistic Missile Defense Review It's a very practicall look at where ballistic missiles are going in the world and where the US should go to defend against them.
One of the MDA funded technologies that comes to mind are the inflatable antenna.
Also, I'm sure the underlying missile technology will be used in other type of rockets for space launches and stuff.
And theres all the little stuff. The communications to make it work, the ground systems, the test and modelling, etc, etc. I'm sure that flow's back into products we never even knew about.
North Korea has twice put missiles on the pad with estimated range to hit the continental US pointed at the continental US. North Korea has also detinated a nuclear device multiple times. Until someone shows a terrorist running around with a nuke and a visa, I'd say the more immediate threat is the country WITH nukes and the missiles to get them from over there to over here.
The answer is first, contractors. They can be quickly hired to do the job and get to keep their over-weight, gay, female, anarchist, old, whatever family life.
In the long term however the military will train young recruits in cyber warfare. You seem to believe you can't train someone to conduct cyber warfare. That sounds like saying you can't train someone to run strait into oncoming gunfire rather than circumventing the enemy. The people creating the ciriculum or doing the training may be over-weight, gay, female, anti-social, and old but they will be passing the k nowledge to the standard young, intelligent soldiers.
I honestly think we'll end up with an internet made of defended virtual areas (the same way that US territories are physically defended). They may not all be government areas either. Maybe the military and the national infrastructure reside within the governments defended areas. And Comcast defends it's area. Or you can pay and be part of Googles defended area.
My guess is the defended areas will only explicitly talk to each other. So if Google and comcast don't come to agreement about what they're willing to pass back and forth, they refuse to talk. Or, maybe google and china's walled areas talk. Except if china starts to break their agreement, google disconnects them.
network space is simply a representation of the physical world except the level of granularity is lower (real world we're still discovering smaller and smaller particles while networks are very discrete) and in network space, things happen much much faster.
I feel for you. But the other side of the coin is what name DO you give guys who are attacking or defending systems on a network? The problem is no matter what you call them, it sounds cliche. Military hackers. Cyber Warriors. Network fighters. Nerd Soldiers. None of it's good. I say we all just use 'cyber' and feel slightly guilty about it because we know it doesn't really work but don't have anything better.
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I wonder if they just work 9 to 5. If they are working 24/7, thats 5 people per position, so a team of 6 always on duty. 6 people is what? The size of a rather large assessment team? This is probably the 6 guys who watch the Great Firewall of China server logs.
IA certs are useful as an engineer if you're looking at government work. If you even come close to the security aspects of the DoD'ish type work, you really must have DoDD 8570 certification. Most people interpret that to be a CISSP, however there are MANY certs that you can/must have in 8570. If the company thinks you even might work on a government contract, they'll look for 8570 certification because it'll be levied by the government. I'd recommend at the least being Security+ (IAM/IAT Level 2) certified. You can also add some of the specialization certs (such as Security Management or incident handling) or OS certs. Those make you a much easier hire.
I would personally consider setting up a simple VPN. Anyone that needs to use the server can VPN into a small LAN first and then connection. On the other side, you can nat 21 and 22 off to a different computer. Run honeyd on that computer and simply capture everything to 21 and 22. it'd take more work to actually do something with what you capture, but you'll have some fun stuff to look at every once in a while.
I think NPR did a story about this a few months back. Basically, it boiled down to gold being really the only choice for a currency (from all of the elements) based on it's physical properties and scarcity. You can read the whole story here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemist-explains-why-gold-beat-out-lithium-osmium-einsteinium
These notes are all from about 6 years of experience doing this with multiple computers, multiple keyboards/mice, and multiple setups. I tried it fairly unsuccessfully for about 3 years before that. I've tried about everything and the above notes are hard won from the 9 years of experience.
This story is irrelevant. When was the last time your time in the air was the longest portion of your flight? Why is it important to have extremely fast spacecraft? Does it matter if they get there a day later? Why is a super fast spyplane important if you can use satellite imagery or local assets which can then beam you the information in real time?
The fact is, the reason we've slowed down is because we realized we prefer to be more efficent than really really fast. Just look at your processor. It doesn't clock faster, but it does more work and costs you less power. I don't think I can think of a single reason where increasing human speed directly equals increasing benefit. (And don't site that 14 hour flight to china. You were going to spend the first day aclimating anyway.)
When you think about it, there's one device that has VERY similar hardware to an airport express... your cell phone. (processor, wifi, audio out). An android app implementing this would breath new life into almost any old cell phone. Now that old G1 you lovingly gave up can take on a new life as your audio interface. Here's to hoping some intelligent developer decides to make this happen. I'd certainly buy it.
My guess is it's a combination of waiting for transistor transitions to occur as well as power consumption. The speed of light or the distance things have to travel really isn't the issue. (i.e. there are multiple things that run at 5ghz, just not CISC processors usually.)
To be completely honest, I'm too lazy to download it off bit torrent. If I want to watch it I'll either get it off netflix or buy it off something like amazon.com. This probably isn't a big enough movie to move me to hit the redbox for it.
I suppose I'm representative of a lot of 30-something's. I've got an income. I've got more responsibilities than I care to deal with. My time is precious and I'm more than willing to trade a few bucks to plop down on the couch, pull up the app, and start the movie playing.
I think a lot of time games try to make your individual decisions important. I don't think that is really a good idea. While it happens in the real world, it is normally considered luck. If you have no reason to know the outcome of your actions, (good or bad), then the fact that something happens down the road is not a direct result of you. You could have been a random number generator.
What I think is better is how your decisions add up in aggregate. In MMOs, and RPGs there are many times 'factions' where each action you take pleases some people and angers others. In everquest, there were zones (PoG) where certain classes wouldn't kill anything because the faction decreases caused them to be unable to participate in their class. Similarly in RPGs, you can make friends with different factions and alienate factions which can lead to everything from higher prices on goods, inability to access quests, and outright hostility by a NPC that might otherwise have sold you a loaf of bread.
Additionally, in most games, there is something you can do to get back in the good graces. Normally it is tedious, monotinious, and takes a long time. This is how it should be. You screw up? You pay your dues.
Ultimately, making very random, minor actions at the beginning of a game turn in to game changing problems later doesn't benefit anyone any more than a guy choosing to stay home and having his house get hit by an airplane does. (And I appologize for the poor spelling throughout this post.)
Get a Kinect paired with a 3D TV/Monitor to allow me to manipulate and visualize my network traffic in 3D? YOU SIR HAVE MY MONEY.
In general, Kinect may be just what it takes to turn the gimmicky 3D screens into a real tool. Coders! Start your IDEs!
Remember though, the same way VMWare 'hooks' companies they'll hook you too. You want to back your VMs up? Thats hard without paying for it. You want to transfer VMs between servers or manage multiple servers? Thats a pay option too.
Also, disk storage on ESX is a horrible pain. Local storage or iSCSI are you only two real choices. No USB which will be a HUGE problem once you want to start backing things up or moving VMs around.
I haven't used XEN (though I'm highly motivated to try it...)
Vmware is fun and great for a play lab, but for your servers you want to make it through a hard drive failure and hardware upgrades? Be careful. The devil is in the details.
I prefer the updates, "OMG pray for me to get through this", "wow, just wow", and "I'll get through this". To everyone who's posted those, "NO. I WILL NOT ASK WHAT YOU ARE REFERING TO!"
I run the exact same thing, (well, OpenSolaris on the smb server). However, my windows 7 computer is downstairs while the TV i supstairs. I ran a long (30-40ft I think) VGA cable along with a USB cable (2 16ft cables that included a build-in signal repeater powered from the USB) from the room with the computer to the entertainment center. At the entertainment center, VGA goes into the TV, USB goes into a usb hub. The USB hub has a extigy usb soundcard (connected to the sound system) and a logitech diNovo mini keyboard/mouse.
This setup works great. My wife is not a tech time but loves it because she can watch her netflix and abc.com shows easily. She can also browse the web/etc. There's something to be said for the windows interface. With a good wireless keyboard/mouse combo (like the diNovo) people are familiar with windows and have no problem navigating it on a 50" tv. People find most set-top boxes or fancy media center interfaces to be foreign and shy away. However, they know what a keyboard and mouse is and they know what windows is and can use both.
We're soooo close to the digital everything assitant (similar to what courier promised), but I expect it'll be 18 more months before we see really solid solutions in this area.
Still, I want a little thing I carry around (like my iphone) with a ton of apps that I can pop in and out of to take care of all those little things i need assistance with hour to hour.
However, when I want to hunker down and troubleshoot my network, I want to be able to flip over and use all my solid network tools that require a computer to act like a computer. I think in some ways thats the promise of android or windows 7 if it receive a solid UI refresh. However, the devices aren't there yet. You're either a phone/tablet focused at apps, (the mini-games of work). Or your a netbook and up (Full games from Portal up to Oblivion). I want both!
I agree with both parents. The laws of armed conflict must be extrapolated from the physical world to the logical one if the US is going to combat it's enemies. They are already attacking in ways that would be unacceptable in the physical world, yet our laws have not caught up with them.
Who here believes that if there was a foreign mititary trying to enter the country through some guy's private beach or some rancher's land, the federal government wouldn't give a second thought to sending the military onto that piece of land to defend it, (and the civilian welcoming it)? That has to apply in the digital world as well. If your personal network is contested battle space, the government isn't going to give it to the enemy just because you are our citizen and not the enemy's.
I know it isn't popular, but I honestly like Bing. It's actually frustrating to see things go back and forth between yahoo and google without consideration of Bing. I very much wish I could get Bing as the default safari engine on my ipod. Sometimes I wonder why the requirement for search selection isn't pushed on people the way browswer selection is in Windows.
(Disclaimer: Not a windows fanboy. Currently running ubuntu, debian, osx, windows, cisco ios, opensolaris and bsd through freenas at home.)
I've listened to his talks before, and this is what he does. He's incredibly good at bypassing chip security and reading out the data on the chips. The question though is do you have to do that every time, or did he find a bug in the code on the chip that could potentially be exploited externally. The article is a bit vague on that. All it really sais is he was able to tap the chip bus. It doesn't comment on the impact of him doing so other than it compromises the whole chip.
That said, the US is paying attention to trends in ballistic missiles. Look up the brand new Ballistic Missile Defense Review It's a very practicall look at where ballistic missiles are going in the world and where the US should go to defend against them.
One of the MDA funded technologies that comes to mind are the inflatable antenna. Also, I'm sure the underlying missile technology will be used in other type of rockets for space launches and stuff. And theres all the little stuff. The communications to make it work, the ground systems, the test and modelling, etc, etc. I'm sure that flow's back into products we never even knew about.
North Korea has twice put missiles on the pad with estimated range to hit the continental US pointed at the continental US. North Korea has also detinated a nuclear device multiple times. Until someone shows a terrorist running around with a nuke and a visa, I'd say the more immediate threat is the country WITH nukes and the missiles to get them from over there to over here.
ICBMs are never "low tech".
In the long term however the military will train young recruits in cyber warfare. You seem to believe you can't train someone to conduct cyber warfare. That sounds like saying you can't train someone to run strait into oncoming gunfire rather than circumventing the enemy. The people creating the ciriculum or doing the training may be over-weight, gay, female, anti-social, and old but they will be passing the k nowledge to the standard young, intelligent soldiers.
I honestly think we'll end up with an internet made of defended virtual areas (the same way that US territories are physically defended). They may not all be government areas either. Maybe the military and the national infrastructure reside within the governments defended areas. And Comcast defends it's area. Or you can pay and be part of Googles defended area.
My guess is the defended areas will only explicitly talk to each other. So if Google and comcast don't come to agreement about what they're willing to pass back and forth, they refuse to talk. Or, maybe google and china's walled areas talk. Except if china starts to break their agreement, google disconnects them.
network space is simply a representation of the physical world except the level of granularity is lower (real world we're still discovering smaller and smaller particles while networks are very discrete) and in network space, things happen much much faster.
I feel for you. But the other side of the coin is what name DO you give guys who are attacking or defending systems on a network? The problem is no matter what you call them, it sounds cliche. Military hackers. Cyber Warriors. Network fighters. Nerd Soldiers. None of it's good. I say we all just use 'cyber' and feel slightly guilty about it because we know it doesn't really work but don't have anything better.