Evilcoder.org

My Snow Collegue Michael Boelen was invited to write a `little” article for the Insecure Magazine for his tool “Lynis”. I think he did a very nice job at that, I read the article and I found it interesting to read!

What is Lynis?

From the Lynis projectpage:

Lynis is an auditing tool for Unix (specialists). It scans the system and available software, to detect security issues. Beside security related information it will also scan for general system information, installed packages and configuration mistakes.

This software aims in assisting automated auditing, software patch management, vulnerability and malware scanning of Unix based systems. It can be run without prior installation, so inclusion on read only storage is no problem (USB stick, cd/dvd).

If you are interested in the tool, visit
The Lynis Projectpage

Insecure Mag:

Insecure Magazine is a periodic Magazine that talks about various Security related items. The one starring Michael’s article can be found here or via the local mirror at Evilcoder.org.

written by Remko \\ tags: Insecuremag, Lynis, Michael Boelen, Snow

Last week Denise and I had been shopping at Ikea’s where we bought some new things for our upcoming house, yes OUR house :-), and we did an inventory of potential victim’s eh furniture for our house. We had a great time looking around and talking to eachother over what we liked and disliked for the house. I think we have around the same ideas wrt. how to build up the house. That said, we have at least one good candidate house so far, and we are going to inspect another house this week if possible. We envy one of the houses we saw (i wont tell which one :-)) so that is a potential (did i say good potential) candidate for our future house.

We also share more and more time together, with Luca and with the two of us, so we are really really progressing forward. Perhaps not as fast as people would have hoped, but hey, we do not overrush things now so that we can do it right.

We had visited Jeugdland yesterday btw, and that was great, Luca had a great time and we walked around and did things with him that he really really enjoyed. Good idea Denise!

Personally my progression is also going well, I am learning a lot at my current assignment, doing much Juniper/Cisco work and some uSyscom (UMTS) and other related machines as well as Windows management (yes I am an Unix Specialist but hey, I understand this as well, which is not that bad, but I still envy the various *nix distributions, it’s so much easier in a networking environment).

I also received my first Juniper certification and I am planning the second one already, including my CISSP and other things (which I will do at a little lower pace because those projects are somewhat bigger to obtain, more theory and more to learn). It remains great that Snow supports me this well!

written by Remko \\ tags: cisco, Denise, FreeBSD, House, Ikea, Juniper, living together, luca, Snow, Unix, Windows

Today is a big day, for me, for Ed Schouten and for FreeBSD (And it’s consumers ofcourse). Why? Ed Schouten today integrated his MultiProcessorSafe (MPSAFE) implementation of the TTY Layer for FreeBSD. From the beginning that I heared about the project, Ed and I had been in contact, both working at the same company (Snow B.V.), we flew to Canada together (Facilitated and sponsored by Snow B.V.), visited eachother, been in contact for ages (or at least it feels like ages, which is a positive point in this case). Ed also gratuated in the meantime by working on this TTY layer. So a lot of good things had been evolved because of this!

For FreeBSD this means that finally the TTY layer is GIANT-less. One more big obstacle removed to entirely getting rid of the GIANT lock ;-), as Poul-Henning Kamp mentioned at some point: This is one of the latest chapters that needed rewriting (since a long time as far as I know).

So I am really happy about this. Good Work Ed!!!

written by Remko \\ tags: FreeBSD, mpsafe, mpsafetty, Snow, tty

Today I did the CCSE exam in Zoetermeer, this is the second exam you can do for checkpoint. After preparing it for around two months (in which time I went on holiday to Tunesia, been on business trip to Canada, had a weekend-holiday with Snow in Texel, searching for and arranging side-paths for a house which we are looking for, so basically study time was ~2 weeks) and spending a weekend and yesterday mainly to learn for the exam, it was time to do it.

I passed with a score of 85% (70% was required); so I didn’t do that bad. I got all kind of enthoustic responses from Snow, and I got a lot of text messages from my current assignment. Thanks folks! It’s appreciated!

Onward to CISSP (the materials seem boring so far) and Juniper (Which I am preparing already as next candidate) (also a dual track, the initial one, and the second level one), and then Cisco (if possible) and if then still possible, the BSDP (second level BSD certification) so that I have broad knowledge in multiple regions of the activities that Snow is offering :-).

written by Remko \\ tags: BSD, BSDA, BSDP, CCSE, checkpoint, CISSP, Exam, Snow