Computer & IT Blog

Pentesting Workshops Scheduled: A few seats still available

Fountainhead College of Technology welcomes cybersecurity expert Joe McCray to campus April 10 and 11 to teach two hands-on, all-day workshops on penetration testing. Students, InfraGard members and attendees of last October’s East Tennessee Cyber Security Summit will be learning about pentesting, which is a method of evaluating the security of a computer system or network by simulating an attack from malicious outsiders or, in some cases, insiders with malicious intentions.

A few seats are still available for the April 11 workshop. The registration fee is $50, payable to "East Tennessee Cyber Security Summit." For more information, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

This workshop will cover some of the newer aspects of penetration testing such as Open Source Intelligence Gathering with Maltego and other Open Source tools. Basic Network Scanning, Enumeration, Exploitation (remote and client-side), and Post-Exploitation relying heavily on the features included in the Metasploit Framework will also be covered. Basic Web Application penetration testing will be covered as well with focus on practical exploitation of SQL injection, and cross-site scripting (XSS).

Joe McCray is the founder & CEO of Strategic Security, LLC, an IT Security consulting firm that provides in-depth technical security assessments of networks, web applications and regulatory compliance gap analysis.

Software packages that should be installed prior to attending the workshop are:

• Nessus: http://nessus.org/download/ (with home feed and all plugins loaded)
• Passive Recon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6196/
• ShowIP: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/590/
• ServerSpy: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2036/
• Tamper Data: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/966/

An amazing scientific breakthrough has taken place after scientists handed over an unsolved problem to a group of gamers who solved the puzzle while motivated to reach high scores. This story demonstrates how important “fun” is in the learning process.

Online gamers solve AIDS retroviral puzzle for scientists
Gamers solve in days, what scientists couldn't in years

Hello, my name is Steven Fisher, aka, "Netwired."

I am not sure how many of you know of an awesome game called MineCraft, but this game is fantastic. A little background info about MineCraft:

• It is still in Beta (due to release in November 2011)
• It is a Sandbox game (Meaning you can build anything you want)
• There are many mods/plugins (modifications for the game)

Have you heard about the new Internet Worm Morto?

You might want to read this.

Internet Worm in the Wild

Well, the word is out. Morto, the latest Internet worm, has arrived and clearly has been working itself around for a while.

Want to know more about cyberdefense and cybersecurity but are not sure where to start?

Then check out this semester's kick-off meetings of Fountainhead College's CyberDefense Club this Wednesday afternoon. Club meetings are held in Classroom 2 every Wednesday from 1:00-2:00 (for day students) and also from 4:00-5:00 pm (for evening students).

The Club is designed for students to learn by doing interesting weekly projects that develop problem-solving skills and marketable, real-world skills on projects related to network security and virtual computing. Fountainhead's CyberDefense Club is led by Tim Thomas, who is the CyberDefense Team Captain, as well as the Recruiting and Admissions Team Manager at the college.

The goal of the Club is to be a resource for students (usually IT, ET, & Programming students – but everyone is welcome) interested in cybersecurity and also to support the school's CyberDefense Team, which competes yearly in the spring at the Southeastern Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (SECCDC). While there, the team is judged on their ability to detect and respond to outside, malicious threats to an existing commercial network and will score points by protecting mail and web servers, responding to business requests, and balancing security needs against business needs.

Interested?

Join the CyberDefense Club by logging into the school's online learning management system "Moodle," and selecting CyberDefense Club.

Or contact Tim Thomas, CyberDefense Team Captain, for more information. Kera Porter serves as this year's Co-Captain of the Team.

PowerShell & Active Directory Domain Services

Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) is the key enterprise deployments of Microsoft Windows. An enterprise using Windows without using AD DS is not taking advantage of everything Windows can do. If you own a business, have more than 5 people employed and you are not using AD DS, you're living an administrators nightmare. AD DS is a role unique to Microsoft's server operating systems. It's not available on Windows 7, Vista, XP or Windows 2000 professional.

Textbook Revolution – the new face of e-books:

For instructors and students alike one of the most valuable tools used in the classroom is the textbook. Some are written well, some are written poorly, some contain pretty pictures and others just plain old text. Until recently, however, there was one common trait that all shared, they were all written and bound on paper.