Thoughts on New Lab

I'm building a new test lab. To start, I needed a lot of Cat 5 cables of specific lengths and colors. Cat5Net.com's handy order form lets you specify just what you need, and their customer service is excellent. Next I wanted a new FreeBSD network management station, so I bought a used Dell Poweredge 2300. For experience with commerical UNIX boxes, I acquired (all used) a Sun Ultra 30 (AnswerBook; I needed a floppy and video adapter) an 7043-150 IBM RS/6000 Model 150 (hardware info) to run AIX 5L Version 5.2 (good AIX site, patches, and support for open source software), and an HP Visualize B2000 to run HP-UX 11i (software news, informal HP box timeline, floppy woes). (Linux is an option too! I feared I needed an adapter like this for HP's EVC-enabled DVI connector, but didn't need one.) Resellers include NORCO, Southwest Computer Solutions, AnySystem, and Elarasys.) Video standards helped me know I could connect, using adapters, to my PC monitor. I hope to run Windows Server 2003 on a Dell OptiPlex GX100, but may need more memory. I think my DSL line will have a Speedstream 5871 router.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti...
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technica...
Read more