Posts

Hacker versus cracker

By Matthew Hunter |  Apr 2, 2023  | gcih
In the early days of the internet, and even before that, there was a distinct difference in the terminology used for the people who obtained unauthorized access to computer systems. The term hacker meant someone who created an interesting hack, usually something interesting that used a system – not necessarily even a computer system – to do something outside its design intent. A Rube Goldberg machine is a good example of a hack.

GIAC Incident Handler

By Matthew Hunter |  Mar 30, 2023  | giac, gcih
I recently took and passed the GCIH Certification. It’s primarily focused on understanding how attackers behave, the tools they use, and why those tools do the things they do.

GIAC Certified Incident Handler

By Matthew Hunter |  Mar 29, 2023  | gcih
Last weekend, I took the certification exam to become a GIAC certified incident handler. Both the exam and the course material leading up to it were interesting enough to deserve a few comments. One thing I was moderately surprised by in the SANS course was the initial focus on Linux shell tools and Windows Powershell. I’ve been using Linux for a long time, so there weren’t any surprises there. The Powershell material was new to me.

Player Characters

By Matthew Hunter |  May 2, 2021  |
All the player characters are listed here. Amathar Barron Elion Elmond Gunnar Kevin Kriselle Leah Lenny Malag Norsk Peebles Pyrzival Seb Thicduc Warin

Komenagen

By Matthew Hunter |  Nov 3, 2019  |
The author of The Stars Came Back, a Heinlein-esque young-adult work of science fiction with a heft side dose of life philosophy, has a new book Komenagen in that same universe. The title is based off of the Platean society’s rite of passage into adulthood. If you like Heinleinian juveniles, this will scratch that itch.

Apache HTTPD, Tomcat, mod_jk, and let's encrypt

By Matthew Hunter |  Sep 10, 2019  |
So I ran into an interesting problem recently. I run a number of websites with custom software, this blog being one of them. I use Let’s Encrypt to automatically obtain SSL certificates for them, since they are personal sites that don’t do e-commerce and the free cert is fine. They are running on Tomcat, using JSP and servlets, with a database backend, and Apache HTTPD in front handling the SSL part.

Docker and DNS

By Matthew Hunter |  Jun 21, 2019  |
Another recently encountered problem: how to make Docker container DNS work when the configured DNS server is blocked. The answer is simple: /etc/docker/daemon.json contains the docker daemon configuration, and you can specify additional defaults. In this case, I added my local DNS server first, followed by the Google public DNS server (which I prefer not to use generally, but am OK with a docker container using). /etc/docker/daemon.json { “dns”: [“192.168.1.1”, “8.

Daredevil Season 3

By Matthew Hunter |  Oct 25, 2018  |
Daredevil’s Season 3 on Netflix has a lot to offer, despite some early warning signs suggesting it might be overly political. The overall plotline involves the return of Wilson Fisk (now openly known as the Kingpin), and Daredevil’s attempts to keep him from regaining control of the city’s criminal underworld. We have an excellent guest villain from Daredevil’s rogues’ gallery, and there are many well-done and subtle callbacks to that character’s earlier appearances in all formats.
About
Navigation