I fell off the face of the planet when I began my OSCP journey. My journey didn’t make it far at all. I never even made it into the labs. I got the VM downloaded, the educational materials downloaded, and went through most of that content over my lunch hours, as well as several evenings. However, we had several very badly timed problematic events in our lives that kept me delayed from making it into the labs. A close family member came down with an unusual sickness, the bonus kids have had a rough time as the holidays approached for one more year without their mother, and the day job doubled down with more hectic workload than I expected, even though I knew it would be heavy. I’ve also been sick off and on a lot the last half of the year, myself. We felt this was partially related to stress, and as a family we decided that it was okay to take the hit on my failure to get into the labs.
All that said, the holidays are past us, now. The bonus kids are doing a little better for it, already. The family member is recovering slowly, but steadily. I have become more active in the local HAM Radio club again, which is helping with my stress levels. I’m ready to put 2018 behind me. As several people have already stated in various ways, I made the mistake of telling 2018 to “come at me, bro” and it did. It did with a viciousness I wasn’t ready for. To 2019, I say, “please come in, sit down, have a cup of tea, and don’t hurt me.”
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but I will state a few things that should be coming down the pipeline from UnixSecLab. First, I intend to come back to the OSCP by way of ordering more lab time after I’ve had a chance to recover from 2018-itis. Second, I’m considering standing up a YouTube channel that covers some of the projects I’ve covered here in the past, as well as a section on the HAM Radio hobby. My GCIH falls off this coming year, if I don’t do something to renew it. I’m still chewing on whether to make that attempt or not, and if not, what plan to get a different SANS certificate in its place. I’m more focused on getting the OSCP certificate, but it would be good to keep at least one SANS cert on my wall.
I will probably be returning to posts focused on SSH configuration over the next several weeks. This topic came up at the day job, and the discussions have generated several stair stepping questions that can be addressed one degree at a time. Some of the answers may be beneficial to others who haven’t done the thought exercises, and may want reference to some ideas on how to proceed in their own environments. What gets presented may or may not reflect what is being done at the day job, but I will try to go as deep into the rabbit hole on creating a secure SSH key management system as I can, with branching options for how to deal with each issue at hand.
I hope everyone has a chance to recover from the brutality of 2018, and I wish the best of the best of 2019 to come for each of you.