Last Updated on Wednesday, 03 February 2010 02:47 Written by Brian Baskin Wednesday, 03 February 2010 00:40

It is 2 February and 2010 is already shaping up pretty well. I have a feeling that this year will be one of many opportunities. I should probably give a recap of 2009, as it will quickly fade from memory (and because I'm practicing for my annual performance appraisal).

Last January at the 2009 DoD Cyber Crime Conference we taught our last Hacking Stuff course, as Johnny had just left CSC and was preparing to move on to his life mission in Uganda. It was a great course and one I was compelled to step it up a bit. A few too many "as soon as I press enter I will be committing a felony... now let's take a break!"

I was able to attend the TechnoSecurity Conference in Myrtle Beach and hopefully justified the expense with a 15 page back-brief.  Helps when you can speed type and basically transcribe entire sessions from the back.  Though, can I admit that I grew to be very ticked off by the last day by some of the attitudes of the speakers and panel experts? Wore my Hackers for Charity shirt for the week, and heard great mention of Johnny's work, but none of his charity... and one person talking behind me about how I'm just a poser wearing a hacker shirt :)  HfC is an awesome organization. Johnny is doing great work, and with the help of dozens of volunteers and sponsors there is real traction being made. I just wish people would focus on 'good will' instead of the name dropping.

That was also the time that I started to become more impressed with the members of Twitter, a service I basically ignored for the longest time.  So, I dove in head-first... and only partially regret the decision ;) I've met some great people along the way. After hearing CharmSec being announced at every single DojoSec I finally decided to show up, and loved it.

The summer saw my employer, CSC, facing a recompete on our existing contract with the Department of Defense Cyber Investigations Training Academy, a contract we've held since before its inception in the late 90's, and my work-home since 2000. I drew the short straw and became the technical volume lead. Not that that held much sway, as it was a large group effort with our brightest minds locked into a windowless secure facility for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 6 weeks. Then the anxiety of the government issuing postponements, one after another, until we graciously received the award. The new contract also placed me into a double duty position. While holding my position as the Deputy Lead Technical Engineer, I was also to become the Distance Education Webmaster.  While maintaining our technical edge for in-house courses I would also be developing our web-based training infrastructure and given a team to do so. My first official, full time duty as a manager and a great team of two bright guys that literally drive me nuts: Timothy Dye and Gregg Presbury :)

With the new job comes new ... skill requirements. Adobe Premiere and Photoshop, Camtasia, and a few that I don't want our competition to know about ;)  We setup a film studio with a chromakey green screen, white muslin, nearly 2000watts of lighting, and HD cameras. We established a new Portal environment for students and alumni at our Academy where we post news, articles, whitepapers, recorded brown bags, and conference talks.

During this time, Marcus Carey and I were talking on the phone and he mentioned how he needed to get someone lined up for a DojoSec in October. I had an idea I've been tossing around for awhile, based on my experiences with some severely hard-line black&whiter's in the career: Casual Cyber Crime. Basically why innocent people commit cyber crimes on a regular basis for completely innocent and benign reasons. As an avid hardware hacker, I've run across a few people out there that think that I should be locked up for jailbreaking my iPhone and gaming consoles. It was a response to them. I spent a week throwing the talk together and delivered it at DojoSec and went long, as usual. I was then invited to give the same talk at TechnoForensics later in the month, which went pretty well (and I only went 5 mins over :))

Then there was Dissecting the Hack: The F0rb1dd3n Network. Well, that's a long story. I volunteered to do technical editing on the new technical reference for the book. That is still under way with a finale coming very, very, very soon. But, that's not a story for me to tell. That duty falls on Jayson Street.

I have just returned from the 2010 DoD Cyber Crime Conference where I was able to assist my friend "Ranta, Don (pg 151)" the RegEx Guru with a custom two-day course on Command Line Log Analysis and Graphical Reporting.  Later in the week I also gave another briefing of my two-hour BitTorrent Analysis talk. I've given this talk for three years now and am fully waiting for interest to die off, but it hasn't.  It's grown.  Now I feel like a one-trick pony :) There were a lot of great training given this year at DoD Cyber Crime and I am honored to work with many bright and passionate individuals in the Information Security industry.

I'm preparing to attend ShmooCon for the first time. I've been trying for four years to attend and it just never worked out. ShmooCon runs right along the same schedule as DoD Cyber Crime so they were usually in competition or too close together. Then years where I just couldn't get a ticket :) I will also be attending DEFCON for the first time, after nearly 15 years of trying to attend.  That's what I get for getting married young :)  Too much guilt about leaving for Vegas for a weekend and blowing money on a social event. I've finally gotten over that and have my wife's insistence that I need to go after all these years. And I'm willing to put up with expected "Oh, you're a n00b since you've never been" comments from aspiring script kiddies that work as grocery store check-out clerks.

2010 should be a very busy year. Between learning all of the videography, pushing our DoD Portal site, expanding our infrastructure, and pushing more course work that will benefit thousands outside of the DoD as we are finally allowed to launch into the realm of the Defense Industrial Base.  I'm looking forward to the challenge!