I sat down this afternoon and passed my GIAC Advanced Filesystem Recovery and Memory Forensics Skills Test and Report (STAR) test. I took the SANS Security 526:Advanced Filesystem Recovery and Memory Forensics course while at SANS Network Security 2009 in San Diego at the tail end of my week long SANS Computer Forensics, Investigation, and Response class (and boy was I tired).

I can’t say enough about how great both of these courses are and I hope that I fare as well on the GIAC Certified Forensics Analyst (GCFA) exam when I sit for it in the coming months. If you ever get an opportunity I strongly recommend you take both of these courses.

Thanks to Paul Asadoorian, I was interviewed for the Tenable Network Security Podcast about University security and my recent SecTor blog post that caused such a stir.

If you’re here at my site, wanting to know the story behind what was mentioned on the podcast, I’d like you to first read the following statement so that you’re entering the fold with an open mind and so you don’t rush in with flaming “should have known better” statements.

It is illegal in Canada to collect personal information without the consent of those being monitored. The act of intercepting private communications without consent is a federal offence and is punishable by up to 5 years in jail.

Now that I’ve got that into your head, enjoy the post – http://www.andrewhay.ca/archives/1071

In case you haven’t already heard from the numerous other sources, HD Moore’s Metasploit project has been acquired by Rapid7 and he has joined the company as their CSO. A lot of people see this as a bad move but I see it as a good thing. Not only does this free up HD to dedicate more time to Metasploit but it also allows him to have a team of dedicated developers working on it full time. Sure the code will probably make it into Rapid7’s products before it’s released to the public but in the end you get what you pay for.

The same thing happened when Third Brigade acquired the OSSEC HIDS project. Some of the OSSEC code was commercialized but the real bonus was how they allowed Daniel Cid to keep working on OSSEC full time. Since the acquisition OSSEC has released some pretty cool enhancements that probably would still be a year or two away had Daniel not been able to work on them full time.

There is always a silver lining folks…