Tales of Ordinary Madness

So I’m working on a paper for school and reading a work published out of China in 1999 by two authors Liang & Xiangsui called Unrestricted Warfare. It’s some very scaring reading about what the future of warfare holds. I’m not sure my opinion will hold (I’m only about 50 pages in) but so far I think it should be mandatory reading for the people charged with protecting our technology and infrastructure. I highly encourage you to read it, although be prepared, it might make you lose some sleep.

So I’ve been slowly (that is VERY slowly) re-arranging my office to make some additional room for some additional computers. My goal is to create a security lab that will allow me in my spare time to work on my web assessment/penetration skills. My intention was to utilize either VMWare or Sun’s Virtual Box to give me some additional flexibility and hopefully keep my electric bill somewhere below the GDP of Micronesia (which in case you are wondering is about 232 million USD). Well while poking around today, I found this great article that covers Virtual Appliances, with a specific focus on those that would be of interest to the security professional. Now many of these would have nothing to do with my web application penetration testing, but they are still some pretty neat appliances. It’s worth a read:

Virtual appliances for the security professional

Tim Zewe shuffled off this mortal coil yesterday, May 2nd 2009. I had only recently been back in contact with Tim again through Facebook. I had hoped to see him and his soon-to-be-wife Christina on one of my trips to Erie in the near future. We had some catching up to do. I found this post on his blog called “Why I Suck at Baseball” and I think it sums Tim up better than I ever could (at least the Tim I knew from so many years ago), and it seems like a fitting tribute:

6 zero days (one of them remotely exploitable).

http://digit-labs.org/

Apple has yet to release a patch for any of them. Come on Apple.

Okay, when you put it that way, I guess they just might be. Great job Redditors!

http://blog.reddit.com/2009/04/redditors-receive-homo-heros-honor-for.html

I knew I missed something when I was in the UK. I missed an opportunity to purchase a Certificate of Debaptism from the National Secular Society.

Debaptism Certificate