Cybersecurity

I would really like to work within security in the I.T industry,
though I am not sure what my next step should be.

I can not afford a security course at this point in time. I have
been reading books and catching up with security tips as
much as I can from the Internet. Though I feel I can not go
any further then where I am right now.

I believe I need to start getting some real practice in keeping
the hackers out and scanning a network for vulnerabilities.
Though I do not want to scan any network on the Internet as
it would be classed as hacking activity.

I will give all my details (IP, OS etc..) to the people of the host.

If you could please help me out with the best way for myself
to be able to put my skills into practice it would be very much
appreciated.

This site is not really about getting a job... but I will answer you to the best of my ability...

Whichever OS you wish to be a Security guru for, you must become a Guru for the OS itself.

What OS are you proficient in OR what OS do you wish to be proficient in?

Since I doubt many people are going to let you break into their computer - even if you do give them your IP and OS - why not just get a second cheap computer and practice on that?

For Unix: Download linux and install it (as it's free), then practise with the system using the knowledge you got from the internet or test the security yourself

For Windows: Suppose you had a windows OS at home and you should have the admin access to it, then play with the security issue for windows too.

Practice makes perfect.

What IDS tools are you using/testing? You can find a whole host of tools and discussions using the search function on this site. Are you looking at just OS security, or are you playing with the network options as well? Honeypots, RBAC, trusted system, NIDS, HIDS, etc.... it is a broad field.

What is your current background?

Cheers,

Keith

Just got a old system given to me on the weekend. It doesn't have working PS/2 ports (keyboard and mouse) So I'm going to use USB keybaord and mouse.

I'm looking at setting up a honeypot with this machine. Then with a Linux machine I was going to use that to hack into my Windows machine on my own network behind my firewall. Also just run basic scans and stuffn on my own network to see how the honey pot works and what information it gets etc.

I'm thinking then I might setup a IDS systems. Just to have a little play with that.

When all this is done and I got a betetr idea of how all this works and what can be done. I'm going to look at re-creating a distro of Linux for security. Not sure at teh features I'll do if I do this yet. This will mainly be for a learning thing, more then liekly wont go any further

I don't think you really understand what a honey pot is. A honey pot is a machine with fake services on it that tries to attract crackers and (most of the time) logs them so they can be dealt with.

However, I do commend you on wanting to learn how things work. If you want a good understanding of how unix works, I strongly suggest avoiding alot of main stream Linux distributions and opt for something a little more BSDish (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Slackware Linux, etc). Another good option for learning about how the operating systems work is Gentoo Linux.

If your focus is security, I'd suggest reading some of the stuff on Packet Storm. However, don't use that information on machine you are not an admin for.

If you focus is how GNU/Linux works, Linux From Scratch will show you how things are glued together from a million parts.

If you focus is operating system design and you know how to code, I'd suggest one of the BSD's (OpenBSD for security).