m0n0wall will be a home project

Our instructor required us to use Smoothwall, in the end. The network team will become the firewall team on Monday, and the firewall team will take network's place. Yep, we're switching roles at that point.

We have documented the procedures, except for one part--the changing of the IP address on the printer from one subnet to the next. Apparently, there's an issue with the firewall on the school's side, and we can't just set a rule in our firewall to treat the printer with (insert specific MAC address here) as static IP address (something.something.something.something).

We have explored various options in nmap, and will be installing nessus tomorrow. I wonder if we'll learn anything about locking systems down a bit, but I'm told we will learn that "later". When? We've got a course on viruses (not writing them or using them, but identifying them), web security, and security "best practices". Perhaps next quarter will be the quarter for learning that sort of thing.

Apparently, Metasploit 3 is out. Our instructor ran a classroom demonstration. I keep forgetting how easy it is to attack anymore--doesn't require any real skill with tools like that. The Metasploit site shows short movies on how to use the tool, as well.

The skill may be in defense, but maybe it's just me hoping that my education so far's not worthless. So far I've figured out that any network component that talks to any other component is probably vulnerable to at least one *known* exploit, and that defense is always going to be the side that's "behind". You can't always defend against everything, after all. You'd go crazy and/or cause the "availability" of your resource(s) to become non-existent.

I suppose there's still time to find a tech support job and become internet-famous for being a fine vegan home-cook...