Augusta 18, meetup wrapup - Blue Team Starter Kit Tour begins

This past Tuesday, I presented my Blue Team Starter Kit talk, that I will be presenting at BSides Augusta (September 12) and DerbyCon (September 24-27) next month. It was a good chat with some good interaction and trolling. I've got a lot of work to do on refining the talk, which was why I wanted to present it at ColaSec as a warmup for the big security conferences.

I will be presenting on Blue Team track 1 at 5 p.m. for BSides Augusta and I will be presenting Friday in the Stable talk track at 1:30 p.m. for DerbyCon. I'm super excited to be presenting at both conferences and look forward to catching up with people I know, as well as meeting some new people.

We had a lot of new faces at this weeks meetup, which is always nice to see. Building relationships and strengthening the infosec community in Columbia, SC, is something I am really excited about and look forward to each month.

Finally, we are helping ITology find speakers for their Trends 2015 conference this October. Details are below:

IT-oLogy presents Trends 2015

Cybersecurity 2020: The Impact of Digital Business on Security

CALL FOR PRESENTERS NOW OPEN

Form to submit:  https://itchallenge.wufoo.com/forms/r1pd8o9s19cfxod

What is Trends?

An IT-oLogy (www.it-ology.org) hosted annual conference focusing on technology issues and topics that are “trending” nationally as well as regionally/locally.  Basically, it heightens awareness around issues that will impact the future of IT-oLogy partners, the local and regional community, and  South Carolina in a big way.  The conference is kicked off by a presentation from a Gartner analyst.

2015 Topic:

This year’s topic is the overall digital transformation taking place in society (everything is becoming ‘digital’) and the associated security issues that come along with it. 

2015 Date/Location:

Trends will take place Wednesday, October 28 fro 9:00 am to 4:30 pm EST at IT-oLogy, 1301 Gervais Street, Columbia, SC 29201.

Call for Speakers:

The 2015 Call for Speakers is now open.  We’re looking for talks in the following areas:

Digital Transformation

A massive “digital transformation” is taking place in society and the pace is only accelerating.  Industries, as well as organizations and individuals, are being impacted in ways never imagined.  What are examples of this transformation?  How is it having an impact?  Why is it important?

Security, specific to the following areas:

•             C level/Executive – security issues impacting executives at all levels (decision makers).  Those topics executives should be aware of and know about. 

•             Technologists – issues impacting those at a hands-on technical level.  Target audience here will be technologists. 

•             Citizen 101 – issues impacting everyday citizens.  Things they should be aware of.  Examples might include a very basic overview of how to encrypt email and/or attachments (most don’t have a clue), why changing passwords often is a must-do (and how to keep up with all those passwords), and other like issues.

Do you have apresentation? We’d like to hear from you! Please fill out the form and Todd Lewis (todd.lewis@it-ology.org) will respond!

https://itchallenge.wufoo.com/forms/r1pd8o9s19cfxod

Presentation at ECPI University

On Thursday, June 4, 2015, ColaSec was invited to ECPI University here in Columbia to give a presentation on Linux/Unix security. Jeff and Adam spent several hours building a security presentation for a students looking to get into infosec. Here are some thoughts from one of the presenters:

Jeff

"The presentation for ECPI was an interesting experience.  We were
asked to come up with something dealing with Unix/Linux and Security.
We were given a time frame for anything from 1 hour to 3 hours.  Adam
and I put together an presentation dealing with things like what
security professionals do, why they do it, what tools they use, how
you deal with data breaches, and some general sysadmin style best
practices for securing linux systems and user accounts.

It turned out to be a lot of material but we covered most of it,
albeit in 3.5 hours (with an unexpected 30 minute lunch break).  We
had some demos tossed in and for the most part the demo gods were good
to us and we were able to complete all but one demo (ran out of time)
on network flow data.  It proved that both Adam and I are talkers and
need to learn to stick to the material.

Most of the class seemed to appreciate the talk.  They seemed to
appreciate the fact we told real life stories and experiences.  They
also liked that we expanded on information on the slides rather than
just read them the information that was there.  We got a lot of good
questions from the class and hope they took some useful information
away from it.

They perked up when we started talking about Wireshark because they
had some exercises on that during class.  They wanted more information
about it and how its used.  We're going to follow up with them with
some links for packet capture challenges (they will be uploaded to the
presentation's google document that they have access to).  These are
games that have been setup that require you to use tcpdump or
wireshark to uncover information hidden in network packets.

Adam and I agreed that we have some tweaking to do to the presentation
and maybe look at breaking it into three parts that can be done
separately or chained together for a longer one.  All and all I think
it went well and I learned some good things from the experience and I
hope the students did also."

Pictures of the presentation are available in the gallery section and the slides can be found via this Google Slides link.

ColaSec meetup January 20, 2015, roundup

Tuesday we had our first ColaSec meeting of the new year at IT-ology. Among the announcements we have POSSCON looking for security professionals to present at the conference who have a background and experience with implementing open source for security related projects. The POSSCON organizers approached us to help them fill the five speaking slots they have available. Each speaking session will be 45 minutes and should cover a topic that includes implementing or developing an open source tool for security. If this of interest to you or if you have questions, contact me at timothy.deblock[at]gmail[dot]com.

I presented on, How to get started and keep up with information security. When I first got interested in security I wasn’t exactly sure where I needed to start. This presentation is meant to share my experiences of going from reading one security related site to reading several, listening to podcast, reading books, going to conferences, and getting involved. If you’re interested in reviewing my presentation the slides are available here.

PRESENTATION: How to get started and keep up with information security by Timothy De Block

A ShmooCon ball at our meeting tonight. One of our members is giving a review of the conference. pic.twitter.com/w2dMqHqFBP

— Cola InfoSec (@cola_sec) January 21, 2015

After my presentation Jeff gave us a review of ShmooCon which he recently attended in Washington, DC. Aside from scaring the shit out of us in regards to our vulnerable home routers, he also tolds us about the Keynote by Joseph Lorenzo Hall, which covered, “the intersection of technology, law, and policy.” Essentially, keeping the internet the open internet. He also told us about encryption and the police, a talk about analysis of point-of-sale (POS) software, Httpscreenshot, Masscan’s ability to scan the entire internet in 6 minutes (calling BS here), and also timing side channels which dealt with some cryptography voodoo.

After those two presentations we got into a little bit of a discussion on career paths into security and what someone would need to do for that. It was a great meetup with a lot of good back and forth and resource sharing. Our next meetup is scheduled for Tuesday, February 17, 2015. We look forward to seeing you there!

ColaSec meetup agenda October 20th, 2014

Our next ColaSec meeting will be held at IT-oLogy on October 20th, 2014 at 6:00 PM.  We will have pizza, a demo of metasploit & some traffic analysis, a presentation on Google dorking, and a discussion of some of the InfoSec news from the past few weeks (there has been plenty).  Adult beverages are welcome, but this is a BYOB event

Please note that parking in the garage at IT-oLogy is free after 5:00 p.m.  You can access this garage on Gervais St between Marion and Sumter.  There's a foot bridge over into the area where we'll be meeting.  Directions will be posted on our website before the weekend.