Well, well, well, the world has changed a lot since my last post. Definitely have a lot of irons in the fire as the old saying goes. Currently working on the PenTest+ certification from CompTIA. I’ll be following that up with the CEH exam. Between those two certs I’ll be working on and getting the ISACA’s Cybersecurity Audit Certificate. 2024 is shaping up to be another great year!
Hit a new deadlift PR at 521/237
A lot has been going on over the last 6 months or so. One of the primary things is that I’ll be doing is taking the ISC(2) Certified Cloud Security Professional exam on 4 NOV.
What does the CCSP cover you might ask?
Domain 1 covers architecture, concepts, and design. Domain 1 also includes cloud computing concepts which covers broad network access, on-demand services, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, multi-tenancy and more. It also includes cloud service models, IaaS, storage types, volume storage, object storage, PaaS, storage types and more.
The cloud service deployment model covers public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, community cloud, management plane, and virtualization.
The things that are covered in the rest of Domain 1 are:
Security aspects of virtualization – Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors.
Principles of secure cloud computing – covering roles and responsibilities, design principles and Identity and Access Management (IAM).
Design requirements – covering requirements analysis, functional requirements, inventory, valuation and more. Cloud model boundaries were also covered as well as the cloud service models, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Protecting sensitive information portion covered hardening, encryption, layer defense, common threats, secure data life cycles and more. And finally, the Threat Modeling portion of Domain 1 includes STRIDE, DREAD, the OWASP Top 10 security threats and the CSA Top 9 risks.
I’ll outline Domain 2 tomorrow along with some other important details.
Ive also been able to make back to CrossFit on a regular basis. Ive also been able to get out on the water a little more often and once I pass this exam in November I’ll take a couple months off and then at the beginning of the year go ALL IN on Heath Adams Practical Network Penetration Testing certification. After that I will take a nice long break from taking certification exams.
Today as a break from studying I took a nice long walk and I found this cool writing spider along the way.
And, it’s kind of fitting that I haven’t posted any sort of lifting videos in…forever, and when I finally get back to training that I end up posting a lifetime PR for my deadlift at 517#. Easy day.
Until next time…
The hardest part wasn’t physical. It was the repetition, the daily grind that felt endless. Whether I was refining form under the barbell or troubleshooting code that refused to run, the challenge was the same: staying patient when nothing seemed to move forward.
Some days you make the lift. Some days the lift makes you. But the point is always to come back tomorrow.
At some point, I stopped expecting each session, physical or mental, to feel like a breakthrough. The breakthrough was the habit itself. The more I showed up, the more the process began to reveal patterns: what worked, what didn’t, and how small adjustments compound over time.
In strength and in cybersecurity, consistency is the quiet multiplier. Each drill, each review, each run-through, one more rep toward mastery.
That same mindset carries through everything I do now — training teams, hardening systems, or writing content. I don’t chase perfect outcomes anymore. I look for steady iterations. A little tighter form. A cleaner line of code. A stronger policy.
That’s how resilience is built, not simply through intensity, but through consistency.
Progress doesn’t shout. It stacks. And one day, you realize the work that used to test you has become the warm-up.
Training for the day:
7 mins of:
7 Banded Sumos
7 Banded bodyweight squats w/moderate band
7 Calf raises
+
A. Back Squat 10, 10,10,10; rest 2/2:30 – 10 RM-ish
B1. Heels elevated air squats x 10 x 3; rest :10
B2. RDL w/an empty bar, sweep away — lumbar focus x 15 x 3; rest 1
C. SL RDL stability, unloaded x 10 x 3; — 5 per leg; rest 1
+
10min alt EMOM:
20 Step-ups – 10 per
15 push-ups
Martial skill work — 5 x 5 min rounds of Z2-Z4 striking, upper push/pull bodyweight movements in trapping/grappling range, and take down defense/sprawling/working underhook escapes et cetera.
Today in my world of Linux and pentesting I worked on building out an Active Directory Lab and worked on the initial attack vectors when attacking an AD based system. Things like LLMNR Poisoning, Capturing NTLMv2 Hashes with Responder, Password Cracking with Hashcat, LLMNR Poisoning Defense, SMB Relay Attacks, Discovering Hosts with SMB Signing Disabled, Start SMB Relay Attack Defenses, & Gaining Shell Access.
Current affairs:
We Got Him (Again, and Again, and Again): On the Latest ISIS Takedown In a Long Line of American Military Actions by Andrew Bacevich
Virginia Supreme Court throws out challenge to Youngkin mask order
Bombshell Proof The ATTACK On Joe Rogan Is Politically Funded! This Is Deeper Than Spotify!
Boom: Rumble offers Joe Rogan $100M to leave Spotify…
And of course, the twat waffle who is Jonah Goldberg, is returning to his roots.
Training:
A1. Seated Arnold rotations x 20, 20, 20; rest :30
A2. Banded triceps press down 20, 20, 20; rest 1
B1. SA DB row x 10-12 reps x 3; @31X1 on the first 5 reps rest :10 secs b/t arms
B2. Snatch grip BTN press w/an empty bar x 15 x 3; rest 1
C1. Assisted pullups using barbell and feet in pullup cage x 6-8 x 3; rest :0
C2. DB push press 15, 15, 15; rest 1
D1. DB shrugs 30, 30, 30, 30; rest :30
D2. Banded upright row 25, 25, 25, 25; rest 90
5 sets of :30secs of work/:30 secs of rest
:30secs KBS – 2pd.
:30secs rest
:30 secs pushups
:30secs rest
:30 secs DB RDL – 55/h
:30secs rest
:30secs 24” box step-ups
:30secs rest
Today’s professional training covered Linux User Accounts and Groups along with Managing File Ownership and Permission. Then in network penetration we covered privilege using Sudo + about hour of training over at tryhackme.
Current Affairs:
The Media Outlets Demanding Joe Rogan’s Removal from Spotify Spread Far More Disinformation
Today in Syria 13 people killed, including six children and four women, during a SF pre-dawn raid targeting ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
Johns Hopkins Study: Lockdowns Only Reduce Mortality by 0.2 Percent – good thing they didn’t announce this study on Rogan’s show.
Trudeau’s lies about Freedom Convoy/Canadian truckers show he’s just gaslighting the everyday working man
CORONAVIRUS — Majority of Canadians Now Want COVID Rules to End After Trucker Revolt — Massive 15 point swing in sentiment suggests trucker are not “fringe minority.”
Warm-up – 10 mins of:
5 air squats
10 banded shoulder pass-throughs
15 banded good mornings
30 Shoulder ROT/stability – 10 to horizontally to the chest, 10 semi-vertically front/down to clavicles, 10 BTN, then…
7 sets of:
6 goblet reverse lunges per leg
3 goblet step-ups per leg
3 goblet squats
6 SA KB Press per arm
6 SA KB Row per arm
6 SA KB Swing per arm
Martial skill work
45 mins of JKD and Wing Chun striking + short-range kicking and counter wrestling
Today’s studies included:
Linux: working toward mastery of the CLI & searching and extracting data from files and archiving. I also focused my practical network penetration testing studies to privilege escalation in a Linux environment.
Bipartisan Congressional War Drums Are Beating Again
The GOAT calls it a career — Tom Brady officially announced he is retiring today.
Find it in you
Today I spent a few hours prepping for the Practical Network Penetration Testing certification.
Today’s course material focused on Reconnaissance. Topics included Passive Reconnaissance, Identifying the Target(s), Discovering Email Addresses, Gathering Breached Credentials with Breach-Parse, Hunting for Breached Credentials with DeHashed, Hunting Subdomains, Identifying Website Technologies, Overall Information Gathering with Burp Suite, Google Fu and everyone’s favorite Utilizing Social Media to find out about all of your friends and neighbors – should be highly informative.
But first! To get my mind right I was able to hit the gym again🤙🏽 — today’s training was:
Upper pressing and scapular stability work
A1. Strict shoulder press – 2 x 10 warm up sets with an empty bar
– then 15, 15, 15; rest 0
A2. Banded upright row 20, 20, 20; rest 0
A3. DB Shrugs 30, 30, 30; rest :90
B1. Strict DB press 15, 15, 15; rest 0
B2. Plate bus drivers 20, 20, 20; rest 0
B3. Front plate raises 20, 20, 20; rest 2
C1. Partial rear delt flies – bottom – 20, 20, 20; rest 0
C2. Full ROM rear delt flies 10, 10, 10; rest 0
C3. Partial laterals – top –5, 5, 5; – perfect controlled reps so you can feel the squeeze at the very top; rest 0
C4. Face pulls 20, 20, 20; rest :90
+
5 sets of:
:20sec AB pedal at 80% effort
15pushups
10 swings
-rest as necessary
Over the last two weeks Ive been doing my best to balance my undergraduate work, my non-existent weightlifting, Wing Chun, BJJ, Jeet Kuen Do (I refuse to continue cosigning to the universal misspelling of the romanization of fist or style of fighting which in Cantonese is kuen vs kune), Thai boxing, and my actual job as a cybersecurity sys admin. Something else Ive added into the mix over the last two weeks is adding in some google education system admin training. I’m happy to report that over these last two weeks I have been able to earn the Amplified Admin Security Specialist Certification for the of us who, at least in a small part, work in the Education Google Workspace Admin arena. It’s an advanced-level, security-specific training for Google. The training built upon the foundational and advanced Amplified Admin Level 1 and 2 courses. It provides a comprehensive understanding of cybersecurity risk factors facing EDU leaders and how to appropriately mitigate through setting configurations.
Next up is Heath Adams’ Practical Network Penetration Tester certification. The #PNPT cert covers Practical Ethical Hacking, OSINT Fundamentals, the External Pentest Playbook, & Linux + Windows Privilege Escalation for Beginners. Once I can get this and just a few more certs under my belt I’ll be able to relax and maybe even take a vacation soon. But who knows, we’ll see 😉
Fix for PrintNightmare CVE-2021-1675 exploit to keep your Print Servers running while a patch is not available
From Bleeping Computer, Public Windows PrintNightmare 0-day exploit allows domain takeover
Live Beach Cams & Surf Reports: Choose a Surf Spot
Cyberespionage, in Central Europe and South Asia. Iranian state media sites seized. Sale of inspection and tracing tools leads to an indictment in France. Cooperation, foreign and domestic.
CyberWire Daily 23 JUN 2021
An essential habit for carpenters is to have sharp tools and keep them whetted. It is up to the carpenter to use these tools masterfully, even making such things as miniature shrines, bookshelves, tables, lamp stands, cutting boards, and pot covers. Being a soldier is like this. This should be given careful consideration.
Matt Shannon, Security Pro 