The class portion of UC Baseline — the cybersecurity training program offered by The Undercroft, Tampa Bay’s security guild — ended yesterday with the final day of Python 101, which marks the end of classes. Every weekday for the past five weeks, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., I’ve been in a classroom (masked and socially distanced, of course), studying and furiously taking notes in the following classes:
There are still two more days in the program. Today is the “Get a Job” career fair. The Undercroft have gathered a series of recruiters, security companies, and agencies to talk to us, including:
For the past four weeks, I’ve been spending over eight hours a day in a classroom in Ybor City, as a student in the inaugural cohort of UC Baseline, the cybersecurity training program offered by Tampa Bay’s security guild, The Undercroft.
We’ve taken the following courses under the tutelage of these instructors:
Take on some harder Python programming assignments, or
Both (I suspect that this will be the case).
The Python 101 course will run from Monday to Wednesday. After that comes…
…the virtual job fair. The Undercroft will set up online interviews between UC Baseline students/Undercroft guild members and representatives from Tampa Bay security and security-adjacent companies looking to hire. I see some resume editing and LinkedIn profile polishing in my near future.
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If you take The Undercroft’s five-week cybersecurity course, UC Baseline,you will have to absorb a lot of material. Right now, I feel like the cat in the video above.
Last night was the final night of the Intro to Python Coding course that I’ve been teaching on behalf of Computer Coach for the past five weeks — Mondays and Wednesdays, 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m..
I’d like to congratulate the students! It’s not easy to spend four hours an evening twice a week learning something completely new and unknown to you, but the students did just that. If you’ve ever been in any of my Tampa iOS Meetup sessions, you’ve seen my teaching technique — you’re not passively watching slides, but coding along with me, and even experimenting, just to see what happens. That’s I what I did with the Python class — we entered code and saw what happened, hopefully learning along the way.
As a farewell present to the students, I sent them a copy of So You Want to be a Wizard, a little “zine” written by Julia “b0rk” Evans for programmers who are starting out that’s full of good advice. I hope it helps them through those moments that every programmer has, when nothing seems to work and all you want to do is throw your computer out the window. I’ve posted it here as well, partly because it’s full of good advice that even experts need to remember, and partly because I want to make sure that everyone knows about Julia’s works.
Even the table of contents lets you that that you’re in for a fun read:
Julia has a whole set of zines, some of which are free…
…and some fancier ones, which come at a reasonable price, even for groups:
Once again, congratulations to the Intro to Python Coding students!
It’s “Case the Joint Day” at UC Baseline, the cybersecurity training program offered by Tampa Bay’s security guild, The Undercroft. We’ve been provided with two target computers — one on the local network set up in the classroom, and one virtual machine set up remotely in the cloud — to examine via all manner of network analysis programs for weak spots.
Now the fun really begins! I’ll keep you posted, and write a more detailed article later. In the meantime, there’s mischief I have to get to.
Which one of my browser tabs causes you more concern? Tap to view at full size.
Now begins the fourth week out of five weeks at Tampa Bay security guild The Undercroft, where I’ve been taking part in UC Baseline, their cybersecurity course. This is their inaugural class, and I’ve been documenting my experiences as part of that cohort.
Me outside The Undercroft during one of our breaks.
This week is the heart of the course — Information Security 101. The previous three weeks, as instructor Gabrial “Tremere” Hartnett put it, was background material. It’s going to be the most information-dense week of the course — in fact, there’s so much material that class time has been extended by an hour each day. This week, we’re in class from 8 to 5.
In preparation for this week, I’ve been absorbing material from Jayson E. Street, VP of InfoSec at SphereNY, and expert at getting into places that he is absolutely not allowed to be in.
Steal Everything, Kill Everyone, Cause Total Financial Ruin!
(DEF CON 19, 2011)
Why you should watch this talk: It’s a pretty good intro to getting access to places and systems that you shouldn’t be able to access, and with skills that you probably already have. Street says that he doesn’t have amazing programming, lockpicking, or hypnotism skills — all his tricks are about exploiting human weaknesses or making use of tools that you can easily find or purchase. This talk includes the line “The best way to get management about a disaster plan is to burn down the building across the street,” which captures its essence perfectly.
Here’s the abstract for this talk:
This is not a presentation where I talk about how I would get in or the things I might be able to do. This is a talk where I am already in and I show you pictures from actual engagements that I have been on. They say one picture is worth a thousand words I show you how one picture cost a company a million dollars and maybe even a few lives. In a community where we focus so much on the offensive I also make sure with every attack I highlight. I spend time discussing what would have stopped me. We need to know the problems but we need more talks providing solutions and that is what I hope people will get from this. I show the dangers of Social engineering and how even an employee with no SE experience can be an eBay James Bond which can cause total financial ruin to a company. These Security threats are real. So are these stories!
I PWN thee; I PWN thee not
(DEF CON 27, 2019)
Here’s the abstract for this talk:
Attackers love it when defenses fail. Implementing defenses without properly understanding the risks and threats is usually a waste of money and resources. This is a frank discussion of what control failures an attacker looks for when attempting to breach an enterprise, as well as how an effective control can help prevent an attacker from being successful. Jayson will walk through real-world scenarios that have led to successful compromise of different companies through control failures. He will also give detailed analysis of controls that led to his attacks being effectively thwarted. Learn how to understand and assess real-world risks, as well as simple defenses which can be implemented to better protect your organization.
Dissecting the Hack: The F0rbi1dd3n Network / Dissecting the Hack: The V3rbOt3n Network (2010 / 2016)
I’ve only started reading the first of these two books, which are probably best described as “hacker spy thriller fiction.” These books are in two parts; the first part is a story in which infosec principles play a key part, and the second part is a great infosec reference.
The class portion of UC Baseline — the cybersecurity training program offered by The Undercroft, Tampa Bay’s security guild — ended yesterday with the final day of Python 101, which marks the end of classes. Every weekday for the past five weeks, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., I’ve been in a classroom (masked and socially distanced, of course), studying and furiously taking notes in the following classes:
