October 16, 2015

Volunteering at GrrCON 2015!

Who’s been to a Security Conference before? I’m finally able to include myself in that group and I’m really exited about that. A conference is all about meeting others in infosec, learning a lot from talks and workshops, trying your hand at capture the flags (CTFs) or lock picking, networking and most importantly having a great time. Not only did I get to go to my first con, I got to volunteer at GrrCON!

September 19, 2015

SSH into Kali

I’ve had a couple posts about Kali on here already. But I still haven’t had a chance to fully get in to it myself. I know, it’s tragic right? Well for those who know less than I do about it; Kali is a linux distro from Offensive Security that comes packed with tools and programs that make hacking easy. However carrying around a computer for work, one for class, one with Windows, and a tablet or two isn’t really an option, unless your bag is designed for 80lbs.

September 16, 2015

Duo Security's 2FA

I hope you’ve been enjoying my posts. I know that writing these posts have been a good outlet for all I have learned over the last few years. This website is hosted on a VM, but it’s still a server that’s vulnerable to your every day hacks. For instance, every day someone pings my server, finds the SSH port and attempts to brute force into it. Now while there’s nothing here for them to steal, there’s still 20GB of free internet storage for whatever they want and the only thing stopping that brute force attack is that they can’t guess my password.

September 13, 2015

Hanging at a2y.asm

Yesterday, I was at Arbsec’s a2y.asm “(as in Ann Arbor / Ypsilanti assembly) [which] is a mini-conference aimed at showcasing presentations on hacking and computer security-related topics by practitioners, researchers, etc. in/around the greater Ann Arbor area.” It’s a small, local, group of Michigan infosec people and it was a lot of fun. The venue was Bona Sera, a nice bar with a basement level big enough for all of our activities.

September 9, 2015

Found a mentor: Jimmy Vo!

I’ve posted before about chatting on #misec IRC and how it’s a great group of people. Well now it’s also the place where I’ve found my first infosec mentor! Jimmy Vo is a security researcher at rapid7 and is teaching me the basics of information security. We are meeting online at least every other week and talking about a large range of things from current security events, best practices, and tool walk throughs (like metasploit), as well as career prep and how to survive in this industry.

August 14, 2015

Remodeling lcori.com

If you’ve been following my posts, you’ll know that I do some consulting on the side for some websites. LCORI is the Lake Chemung Outdoor Resort in Howell, Michigan. My grandma has been working on the board for more than a few years. She came to me asking to help fix the navbar on www.lcori.com, and I was happy to help. After getting into the code, I saw that it was a bit of a mess.

August 13, 2015

Making a website using Jhipster

Who likes Angular? A JS library that is all about load a page once and get a dynamic website. Who likes Node JS? A server written in javascript. Who likes scripts that write code for you? Hello Yeoman! The first time I used Jhpister was for a innovation project that maps out the office seating. This is a great internal tool since we have an entire floor of developers and finding the third “John Smith” is kind of annoying.

August 12, 2015

jwgoerlich's PCI talk at #misec

First meeting at #MiSec and I missed it! Right as I was about to leave, there was a knock at my door. Impromptu Comcast employees trying to save us a couple hundred dollars. Of course by the time they were done installing free cable, it was already 7:05 and it would take 30 minutes to drive to the meeting… So I watched the live stream on youtube and wrote comments on IRC.

July 29, 2015

Found a group, sticking with it.

GrrCon 2015 is in October, it’ll be a great conference with a lot of talks. It’s the first con I’ll be able to attend. The tickets are a little expensive and I was unsure about going since this would be my first conference… Not to mention I’m still trying to get through college and I’m tight on money. So of course, I’m volunteering! I’ll be working my butt off to get you the best Con possible while making all the connections I can.

July 29, 2015

COGSS Website: Automated Scoring for Collegiate Gymnastics

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that my girlfriend is on a gymnastics team. I did their club website for them a while ago. I went to a meet they hosted their year and helped out as much as possible. They were using a Microsoft Excel sheet to do all of their scoring for each event. While watching the guy use excel, I got a headache just trying to follow the complex steps that were set up for it… so I had the bright idea to set up a website that simplifies the process and allow anyone to use it for their meets as well.