2018 came with a big transition for me, a new opportunity came up that allowed me to pivot into InfoSec full time. Without going into too much detail I’ll be doing a bit of offensive security. This is very exciting for me to say the least.
One of the things I am working on that I have had plans to build out eventually for some time is a home pentesting lab. I’ve managed to setup a multi-core CPU PC with about 32 GB of RAM. I’ve setup a virtual environment using KVM that I plan to be managing with RHEL based tools. For now I’m using the Gnome Boxes and/or virt-manager. My plan is to simulate a fully functional environment networked VM’s to act as an attack range for both known and new exploits that I’ll use for practice or research.
Besides the lab, I have plans to study for some security certifications. I have a few in mind. I’ve been using pentesterlab.com for some time now and have been pleased with it. Besides practice and study, I plan to do lots of work because the only way you get better at something is to do it. Of course, watching more talks, going to conferences and learning from my peers as much as possible is all goals for the next year.
I also have some personal goals, they’re not resolutions because they’re just goals I’ve had for some time now. One is my health, I’ve managed to lose a lot of weight in the past year on a ketogenic diet. I plan on continuing my weight loss using a mixture of intemittent fasting and weight lifting regiment (doing both at the same time isn’t my plan). I have other personal goals that are mostly sub-goals or steps towards long term goals. I also have a few projects in the hopper including getting a 3D printer I built last year working properly. It still needs some calibration and its almost more trouble than its worth so motivation has been lacking. I’ve also made a little bit of progress on my arcade cabinet which I’ve been modifying, but I have no idea what I’m doing because it involves carpentry.
I have the super common problem (well common enough for their to be an xkcd about it), of having multiple chat/IM/communication platforms to manage for various organizations or interests. Slack, Discord, Google Hangouts, IRC, etc. The problem is having so many clients boggs down resources on my computers, especially since many of the desktop versions are Electron based. I’ve started using Quassel to maintain a persistent IRC presence across computers. But I’ve also recently discovered Rambox as a single “client” application that I can run all my communication apps in one app, and also replace a few tabs in my browser.