AntiView - D0pp139an93r

Here's one that's been requested numerous times (granted, most of the requests were by the interviewee!): D0pp139an93r!


Name: Robert Cox

Place and date of Birth (or age): Venice, Florida, 24

Current place of residence: St. Petersburg, Florida

Marital status: Single



AO: How did you get into computers?

Way back in the day... I got my first computer... A Tandy 1000TL. I started playing with it. Never stopped.

AO: What is your area of specialty?

OS Security, and really OSs in general. I still know very little about hardware.

AO: What do you do for a living?

Right now, I just do small repair jobs, mostly malware removal.

AO: How did you get into your career?

I went to college for six years, never actually got a degree, but I got a very good reputation as the person to go to for help.

AO: Describe your education and/or training?

Self taught.

AO: Do you plan on staying where you are (career-wise) or are you still in school / working on certs to get into another area?

Actually, I'm headed to the military. I am in the process of enlisting in the US Army.

AO: What one piece of advice would you offer to others who may be interested in following a career path or educational path similar to yours?

Stay in college. For the love of God... get a meaningful degree.

AO: What skill do you think is invaluable in your area of specialty?

The ability to look beyond what you see in publications and on websites. "Common knowlege/wisdom" is often flawed.

AO: Describe one of your best / most effective security practices.

Setting up an effective set of file permissions. In most cases this can end malware.

AO: Do you have a little-known fact about yourself (personal, hobbies, tech-related) that you would be willing to share?

Yeah... If anyone remembers, a few years ago... I was "t3h h0m31355 h4x0r." Travelling around Danbury CT with a Toshiba laptop... and getting in quite a bit of trouble.

AO: How did you find Antionline?

I don't remember. It's been a long time. I seem to recall it was right around the time my daughter, now 5, was born.

AO: Anything else you'd like to share?

Negative... You have a really cute tush.

The question asked about something to share. You are in no position to be sharing my tush, soldier.

ROFL: Nice.

D0pp139an93r: You mentioned that setting up an effective set of file permissions could almost end malware. I agree to a certain extent.

What approach do you take to secure a m$ box filesystem? Are you using the builtin security templates and modifying them? Or you you creating your own and exporting for future use?

I realize that this may be outside the scope of this antiview, if so, we can break it off to a new thread. I was just curious about your approach.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by phishphreek

ROFL: Nice.

D0pp139an93r: You mentioned that setting up an effective set of file permissions could almost end malware. I agree to a certain extent.

What approach do you take to secure a m$ box filesystem? Are you using the builtin security templates and modifying them? Or you you creating your own and exporting for future use?

I realize that this may be outside the scope of this antiview, if so, we can break it off to a new thread. I was just curious about your approach.

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For my personal machines, I have always used a comlpetely custom approach, of course, this is much easier given that I am using Windows 2000. If it is a box I am doing for clients, I find an appropriate template, and go from there. Since on my machine, I know exactly what I need, and what I am going to run; this is often not the case with the client base I have. I very rarely get to play around with enterprise configurations, where only specified applications are run, and there is a predefined environment that I can play with.

For each of my machines, I design a different approach, however, there are some commonalities. I have a deny set for execute/traverse folder on the local settings folder for my IE user, I filter specific ports for some of the serivces that tend to be needed, the Remote Procedure Call services for example, are required for a number of applications, but do not need to be remotely accessable.

I haven't bothered to go too far into local restrictions, since all of my machiens are in what would be considered a secured physical environment. I don't need policies that prevent users from using any sort of media, or running anything they want; I am the only user.

I will probably post a more in depth approach later on. My son is currently fighting me for the mouse.

Good thing the army has that policy of don't ask don't tell huh? We'll have to ask Mel if Belgian booty is better lol.

I was out of town for a couple of days without a PC or internet access. My 90yr old grandfather does not own a computer and I forgot my laptop.

Anyway...

I've modified the security templates depending on if they are for a workstation or server. All workstations have the same base security template. Servers security templates vary depending on role.

Then I import those templates into group policy and drill down on the permissions based on the users role. Most of those additional permissions are for program specific settings on both the filesystem and the registry.

I'm kind of lucky in a way. There are only about a half dozen or so configs that I really need to manage. It makes it kind of easy to keep the filesystem and registry locked down.

Why do I have visions of the movie "Stripes"? LOL.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by thehorse13

Why do I have visions of the movie "Stripes"? LOL.

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:|

I'm just going into the military to fix boats.


Good movie tho...