@copy @ScottPack @Simon The problem I'm facing is that all of my security knowledge is self, but I can't get recruiters to take me seriously without proven skills. I was looking into graduate programs, but even infosec programs seem to focus more on the business side than the technical, and they far more expensive than any training. I'm also interested in the CV appearance.
@ScottPack That's the thing, I've done all of the above at one point (I had an internship pushing paperwork for the account lifecycle...was that boring as hell), but I prefer the challenge of breaking things. :)
I mean, the first trick to finding a job is finding what you actually want to do. If you want to do pen-testing, for instance, some places do hire junior members straight out of school. In that case your biggest bang for the buck might be one of the Big4 auditing firms. We have a number of their former (and current) employees here.
Might I pimp myself and point out this question that might be useful?
As a fresh graduate I'm wondering what my chances are of joining a great pen-testing group. Is there a risk that a career in pen-testing may one day not be needed? If so, how applicable will skills from a pen-testing job be towards getting another job in the IT field?
In using various web apps, I've previously noticed issues such as open URL forwarding via a GET parameter. That lead me to try things like WebGoat, where I could explore these problems without legal issues.
And I've actually had a few smaller firms tell me in interviews that they liked my knowledge of the full stack. Unfortunately, those firms have also gone radio silent after telling me that they are not sure exactly when they'll need someone, depending on customer's requirement.
I still go back to the fact that I actually consider security a career advancement from many other fields. I mean, by my reasoning you gain a high level of proficiency in one thing, augment it with a differing outlook.
Contracting companies are always scary like that, yeah.
Hell, I'd take a job as a Jr linux sysadmin just to have something to do, but so many HR bots reject my application (probably due to lack of keywords for their favorite stack) before it ever reaches a human...much less a technically minded one...but now I'm just ranting...thank you all for your thoughts
Hey, no worries. I'm all about helping people get jobs. I got into this field by pure accident. One of my students was on the security team and they had a student position open.
Too bad you weren't around a few months ago. We had two positions open on our Linux team.
This just got announced. I dunno if it interests you at all.
Thanks. I'm actually from Columbus. The job market does seem slightly better there. Due to a crazy series of events, I'm stuck in Cinci, so I'm focusing on that area until I get really desperate.
Could you advise public key cryptography book/reference that illustrate concepts with help of MS CryptoAPI. MSDN is good but MSDN organized by functions. I need books style: to consider some topic, use cases with illustrations with chain of MS cryptoAPI functions.
"I chimed in with a haven't you people ever heard of, closing the god damn door, no, it's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poisoned rationality..."
@RoryAlsop One day I'm going to start a band called "As I turned down Angela's rainy street, just before her heart's funeral, the roadblock ruined everyone's day"
Illustrate public key notions with MS CryptoAPI. And give references on authoritative scientific sources[mandatory for good answer]. I want to map my crypto knowledge on CryptoAPI.
Oh, it's so tragic I lost my remote, A frog caught in my throat, As I try... To imagine, How much of MLP, I will surely not see, As I answer the call, On the front of my door, -- Oooh, Amazon!
there we go, we already have our first song
@RoryAlsop all of the album covers will be staged black-and-white happy couple photos of one of the band members with some girl they don't even know.
All boobs desire cold, rough boobs. The small jug swiftly desires the breast. Lick is a sunny breast. The stormy tit quietly desires the tit. The big jug swiftly desires the boob.
Dead, big smokes swiftly lead a warm, lively explosion. Why does the sex die? Love, life, and endurance. Clear, lively explosions roughly fight a dead, sunny sex.
It is common knowledge that password cracking attempts can greatly benefit from specialized hardware such as large clusters of GPUs or FPGAs.
Are there any implementations of the commonly recommended password hashing algorithms (PBKDF2/bcrypt) for common or popular programming languages and/or f...
seriously, though, Let's try to keep the chatter here down to a low roar. ladies. I cant read a transcript of thousands of messages since yesterday, dammit.
@TerryChia 350 usd, plus local fines to the thugs...
@AviD how come you don't have the copy editor badge? The all times editor ranking shows you have over 1.4k edits and there's 500 of them required for that badge? :O
@ton.yeung Usual suspects are encoding issues. Make sure you input the exact same bytes, both for the message and the key. There are various ways to both the thing, including extra spaces, final newline character, or taking an hexadecimal string as a string instead of converting back to the bytes.
Come what may, take a SHA-512 implementation and the HMAC spec, compute the intermediate values, and see who is right.
Would asking a question regarding how to get started on a major overhaul of personal computer security be too vague a question to ask on the security stack exchange? In particular, I'd like to ask about recommendations for smart cards and readers and their integration with password managers etc in Linux, with the purpose of entirely moving away from password-based security
@AviD: OK. Would it be OK to ask for recommendations for smart cards, what standards and brands to look for, and integration with browsers and password managers in Linux?
also its quite likely that, when you figure out what your specific question is, you'll find its already been asked - and answered - at least once already.
@gspr you do need to make it a specific match for your exact requirements, though - otherwise its really wide open with any of a dozen different answers being schrodingerly correct.
AviD: Does my basic idea make sense to you? Here's a summary: Too long have I skimped on password security. I'd really like to take some time to improve fundamentally, and I've been thinking of beginning to use a hardware token to unlock SSH/GnuPG/other keys and to control access to a password manager storing new, huge and random passwords.
In short: I'd like to comprehensively revamp how I think about authentication, and for a private individual with limited means, basing the approach on smart card unlocking of a password manager seems reasonable at first sight