A while back I wrote about the importance of using a standardized time source. Keeping accurate time across devices is essential so that you can easily correlate events within logs across the network. But what do you do when you’re operating on a closed network and there is no time source that you can pull from?
This is the first of what will be a number of posts on building out parts of a basic mission network. This network will be based on Centos 7 (Linux), with an IPA server (Linux version of Active Directory), have a local patching server, and a number of there features. Today’s article will focus entirely on the basic build of a Centos 7.0 system and will serve as the base system for all of the other lessons in the future
I know I’m a little bit late getting this posted but here is the schedule for the first half of FY 18 warrant officer selection board. As I’ve written before a few times, it’s our job to find our replacements so make sure you take the time to talk to your NCOs that show promise and mentor them to come to the dark side.
You likely haven’t noticed yet, but if you look at the top corner of your browser, you should be seeing a little lock symbol up there for the first time (at least when you came to this site). For years now, Signal-Chief has been served up on straight HTTP. I was never really worried about it because there is no personal information on the site, and the only person who actually logged into it was me (and I use unique passwords on everything)
So you may not have noticed (hopefully) but I recently moved signal-chief from a shared hosting instance on GoDaddy to a dedicated VPS system. As a cyber guy, one of the first things I wanted to do was to start with some basic security so of course step one is to run yum update to update all of my packages, and step two was to setup some firewall rules. To allow me to initial a connection (DNS, http, whatever) from the server and get the return traffic back. Unfortunately when I tried to run this command I got “iptables: No chain/target/match by that name” sent back to me. Well that’s frustrating.
Imagine this scenario…. “The first neutron passes the LD and engages enemy position. The enemy position is destroyed and the damage is extensive enough to cause an adjoining position to catch fire. When the ammunition in that adjoining position explodes it takes out another position…” Huh?
As anyone who has spent more than an hour or two driving around the box at NTC knows, it can be pretty damn easy to get lost in the desert, especially at night under blackout conditions. After 3.5 years there, I got pretty good at knowing my way around the box but during each rotation there was always at least one or two times where I would get turned around and have no idea where the hell I was
Today Signal-Chief.com is joining the likes of Github, Google, Amazon and host of countless others who are protesting the FCC’s proposal to end its current policy of Net Neutrality.
I was looking through Nixcraft on Facebook yesterday (if you haven’t been to it before, check it out) and came across the graph. As a warrant officer, we’re supposed to be experts in whatever field it is that we happen to be in. But what exactly does that mean?
One thing that I first noticed occasionally as a Net Tech, and then more as an OC/T at NTC and finally a ton now that I have moved into the cyber side of the world is the just how important logs can be. The problem….we suck at actually saving the stupid things.