@MarkBuffalo Did you ever try VB5 or VB6? That's the easiest (not necessarily best) development platform I have ever seen bar none in terms of allowing people to develop simple stuff quickly.
@MattClendenen Dumping packets = any kind of taking them off the wire. Tcpdump puts them into a file for reading by another file. You could just parse them to stdout, or else do what aircrack-ng does and look for WEP IVs, then load them all into memory and crack WEP.
As for Intel, well, analysing captured packets of any kind is still a hard problem - on say an ISP level you might call it deep packet inspection and one use is to see if what's going over say port 80 really is HTTP traffic. That's a bit too easy obviously, as you can read it, so what about 443?
This is all "Intrusion Detection" and there are various IDSes of various kinds... people have varying opinions on their efficacy too since they've got a near impossible job (find a needle in the haystack).
I'm only really suggesting this as an exercise and it is only one area, but, if you don't already know it parsing raw packets will teach you about ethernet frames, vlan frames (for @silverpenguin), IP frames etc.
In other words you get a nice look at a packet.
There are plenty of other options though - dig around for an open source project you like the look of.
@silverpenguin I actually did it with libpcap in C. It was... interesting.
Anyway there are other things you can do too. If you think webapp security might be your thing, you don't have to write code, you can try taking apart OWASPs vulnerable web apps.
Here's another project: build a web application firewall. Use something like python's tornado to proxy web application requests. However, before you do, decide if they represent an attack, and return some appropriate page for those that do.
Anyway I actually came to drop this link in for @RоryMcCune - there is actually a commercial haskell special interest group looking to make haskell a viable language for commercial development: github.com/commercialhaskell/commercialhaskell
@silverpenguin if you get your offer to become a pentester I'm sure by the time they have finished training you, you will not be lost.
@diagprov im just worried they are to confident in my abilities... im a Web dev (back end) ... I understand networking and I love cracking wifi and MitM attacks xD.... i dunno, my pay is going to be higher than most jr pentesters because of my web experience
@silverpenguin I'm the wrong person to advise here, I don't work in security. However, I'm sure it'll be fine. I guess most junior pentesters are graduates and therefore you do have more experience than them.
Cannot believe 6 hours later and im still trying to capture these flags
yawns
if anyone is interested... I am trying to trick a if statment in C to think that I have entered the same values as another var ... though being C I cant remember if == is valid for comparing strings... if not then i need to try and copy the mem addresses over
or Im going complete PGP VPN LOL BRB JK AFK what ever acronyms I can find
@MarkBuffalo the more dickheadish they want to be, the harder the future will be for them... people will create harder security to crack and people will use it
Hey I'm about to buy a new pc (would run microsoft and linux alongside). I was wondering what processor should I use, what graphical card, etc. What are your thoughts on that?
the only real difference with graphics cards at that tier is that modern AAA games are more content heavy than last generation's AAA games and a card with more than 1GB is basically a requirement now
so actually getting a card with 4GB of ram is worth while if you're going to be using highest level texture settings and what not
my gaming PC has a 970 in it which is on the low end because I've gone off gaming and primarily play older games but that's on the bottom end of "possibly OK for casual VR" scale and I'm not upgrading
I will upgrade when there is a game I want to play that doesn't run
@kalina ah they have this cool safeguard, where it knows where the real wall is and you get a hologrid effect over the game if you're about to run into it
not sure that'll work in the heat of battle every time, but looks pretty good
I remember reading a book on cryptography with a section detailing the objectives that modern cryptography must accomplish, one being that even if the algorithm is known, the method remains secure. I.e. the so-called Kerckhoffs's principle. What are the other standards an algorithm must accomplis...
@LucasKauffman Unfortunately, you use Hotmail, and Hotmail refuses to receive emails from me (both because of the IP address of my mail server, and because my email address contains a "forbidden word"). You won't get an answer from me if you do not find a better-behaved email provider.
@RoryAlsop yeah ideally sounds like a 980Ti might be good, but I may have to go for a straight 980 to keep inside my power budget (I don't fancy changing power supply as it means I'd need to redo all the power cabling)
Well - Scotland won the rugby (and Hamish was at the game holding the huge Scotland flag at the start), Eilin's team won their netball, and now I have wine. Life is good:-)