Tech blog
Palo Alto Networks make security products. In particular, they sell firewalls (physical and virtual), and their Panorama software will let you manage multiple firewalls centrally (e.g. for branch offices). Their certification program has 3 tiers: Entry level Administrator Engineer Palo Alto Networks offer free training for all of these, although you have to pay for …
Continue reading “Palo Alto Networks Certified Cybersecurity Associate (PCCSA)”
In April 2019, I took the Offensive Security Wireless Attacks (WiFu) course and the OSWP exam. (Along with PenTest+ and Microsoft 365 Fundamentials, this was my third exam in a month!) In brief, I enjoyed this. I thought the content was interesting, and the exam was actually fun (similar to an escape room). However, the …
Continue reading “Offensive Security Wireless Professional (OSWP)”
In April 2019, I took CompTIA’s PenTest+ exam. Along with CySA+, this bridges the gap between Security+ and CASP. As the name suggests, it’s all about penetration testing. This is a relatively new exam, and it’s still on the first release (PT0-001). Because of that, it’s not very well known, so I haven’t seen any …
In September 2018, I took the (ISC)2 SSCP exam (Systems Security Certified Practitioner). This was a bit different from any of the previous exams I’ve taken: normally I would sit the exam(s), then get a qualification if I passed. In this case, the exam is only one component: you also need to be endorsed by …
In November 2016, I took CompTIA’s Security+ exam. NB I did the SY0-401 syllabus; CompTIA replaced it with SY0-501 in October 2017, so some of the info in this blog post will now be a bit out of date. In brief, I think that this is a worthwhile certification. It emphasises breadth rather than depth, …
For the last couple of years (since July 2018), I’ve been receiving “sextortion” emails. There a few variations, but the basic gist is always the same: “I’ve hacked your webcam and filmed you masturbating, now pay me money or I’ll send the video to everyone you know.” They often include my password, in an attempt …
A lot of organisations set up security policies so that users will be locked out if they enter the wrong password too many times. The idea is to prevent brute force attacks, where an attacker could sit there all day running through the dictionary until they guess the correct password. The downside is that this …
Back in 2011 I switched ISPs to A&A, primarily because they support native IPv6. Incidentally, 3 years on I see that you still can’t get IPv6 from Zen, so I made the right choice by switching. Windows has had IPv6 support included by default since 2006 (i.e. Vista onwards), so the missing piece of the …
Continue reading “Installing dd-wrt on a Linksys WRT320N wireless router”
Scareware is normally just a minor nuisance, assuming that you know how to get rid of it without paying any money. However, I’ve now come across a new wrinkle: it can get you blacklisted, so that you can’t send email.
When I created accounts with Facebook and LinkedIn, both websites asked me for my email password to help me find people I know. The idea is that they can log into my email account, go through my address book, then search their own database for people with matching email addresses. That would certainly be convenient, …