Security Chipmunks

Episode 7 - Helping others following in your footsteps

• Edna • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Welcome to the Security Chipmunks podcast where we talk about the development of cybersecurity skills. To stay up to date in today's world you need to be resilient, that’s why as Advanced Persistent Chipmunks we keep chipping away at it


Today we are joined by special guest Colin Lindberg


Tools:
https://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.techet.netanalyzerlite.an&hl=en_US&gl=US

https://www.fing.com/products/fing-app

Further Reading:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3228917-outliers

https://ideas.ted.com/dont-have-10000-hours-to-learn-something-new-thats-fine-all-you-need-is-20-hours/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38390751-the-infinite-game




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UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Security Chipmunks podcast, where we talk about the development of cybersecurity skills. To stay up to date in today's world, you need to be resilient. That's why as advanced persistent chipmunks, we keep chipping away at it. My name is Meg Sedna-Johnson. My co-host is Neil Smalley. And today, we are joined by special guest Colin Klinberg. Colin, it's a pleasure having you here today.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. So would you tell us about yourself and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_02:

Sure. I'm a career changer, but multiple careers. Started out in culinary arts, went to Culinary Institute of America, had my own catering company for a little bit, jumped out of that, got into IT because I've actually been a computer guy my entire life, and found out that I make twice as much and work half as many hours, and I get benefits from doing IT work And from doing that, I've done help desk for now two major aeronautics companies, one owned by the French government and the Boeing company. I've worked on cell phone towers, building them, installing them, engineering them, commissioning them, where it's taken me all over the country. Spent a year in Alaska doing that, spent some time in Hawaii doing that. Kind of done a little bit of everything and haven't really settled down in one specific area, only a except for the past couple of years where I've really been going heavy into networking, IT networking, and most recently kind of trying to make the transition into cybersecurity by starting at WGU last July.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's very, very cool. So are there any projects that you're currently working on?

SPEAKER_02:

Right now I'm in the pre-production phase for creating videos to help and assist new WGU students coming in. Because what I'm seeing is as we're getting new students joining every month, there's a lot of people that are career changers who don't really have much in the way of IT experience, but they're very enthusiastic. And I think that's the best thing that you can capitalize on. If you can get somebody while they're enthusiastic about a subject and get them a little bit down the road, you can keep that momentum going. And so what I'm trying to trying to do with uh is create a video series where we can kind of make a uh tutorial and handholdy if you will for new students on how to get started and what some of us might consider really basic simple things but to the outside person it was like wow you know that's superman level stuff and it could be you know simple things as hey i'm a student at school do I have any access to free resources? What are those free resources? How can I utilize them? It could be like Windows licensing. It could be discounts for Hulu or Amazon Prime, small, low-level stuff, but can ultimately lead into bigger things. And ultimately, I like to shape it into, hey, okay, now that you've taken advantage of all these free student resources, now let's get into the nuts and bolts of things. Let's figure out how we can start what I would call gamifying our learning. So really get into, you know, the big one that everybody likes to do is like hack the box or try hack me, right? They want to start to learn how to be a hacker man or person, woman, whatever you choose. It's one of those things that there's a little bit of a barrier to entry there. And unless you go through and read a lot of information, watch a lot of videos, you're still kind of just, I don't know where to begin. First couple of videos I want to tackle is how to create a VM setup on your computer. across different platforms, so Mac, Linux, Windows, as well as the different softwares and different implementations that you can use to do that. A really great one that I actually like to use is the Windows subsystem, and that got added to Windows 10 about two years ago. And you can go straight to the Windows Store right now and just type in Kali, K-A-L-I, and download an instance of Kali Linux on your machine and it is running on your machine. You don't have to do any other VM.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that makes it a lot easier.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And then the nice part about it is that Kali, the offensive security, the people that distribute the Kali Linux distribution, even have a really, really wonderful walkthrough on how to set all that up, as well as how to give yourself a desktop on top of that as well. So even if you're coming into this and you don't want to jump straight into command line, and you're a little bit scared of you know being a keyboard warrior you can still you know start off with in the safe space with a desktop and that's pretty much how I run most of the time whenever you know I get into some of these CTF capture the flag challenges or I'm working on these boxes is I will pop out you know different windows here and there of whatever I'm working on so that way you know I'm most comfortable in my windows environment so I can do all my research there but then I can switch over to you know another window or another monitor and be like okay this is going to be my Linux side of things and this is where I can do all of my attacking or investigation my recon things like that

SPEAKER_00:

so

SPEAKER_02:

yeah

SPEAKER_00:

you're doing some great things that's going to be awesome I'm sure those walkthroughs are going to help so many people that are that are just getting started and your experience is going

SPEAKER_02:

to

SPEAKER_00:

putting into that process It's

SPEAKER_02:

going to be great. Thank you. I am and not really being able to do anything about it so you know 30th birthday kind of had that moment I was like okay I have to do something to change the situation to be more successful and I was like you know we're outside of that window of over prescription of drugs I'm not a teenager anymore I'm a man and I was like let's try it let's see what happens and for me it was that it literally was an overnight thing like flip of a switch and things just kind of coalesced and I was able to just become more focused and more driven in whatever I was working on. And so because of that, I still retain a lot of my old bad habits, but I can also kind of use them to my will at the same time. So the one thing that I feel that I'm good at is because I've had such a difficult time learning new things, I've had to create my own learning style which is usually more difficult than it needs to be but the end result of it is I end up having a pretty deep understanding of whatever that information is and can pretty much identify where people get stuck most of the time so it's I have a what I would consider I don't want to say innate but I have a sensitivity if you will to know like okay this is going to be a sticky spot this is where more information needs to be focused because if we get this one piece of the puzzle it unlocks 10 other pieces for us so that's kind of that's the you know the pie in the sky mission statement it's the reason why I want to do the how-to videos is because I think I can bring my idiotic way of doing things to help teach people because I think most people realize or they feel at a that they are stupid, but they feel stupid. And they know if they just had somebody there, you know, helping them out that they could get it. But it's just, you get so frustrated and you don't even know what you don't know at that point. So it's, I hope to, you know, give some reassurance and some step-by-step instructional information on how to succeed, how to get past hurdles, essentially.

SPEAKER_00:

What are the biggest challenges that are facing you right

SPEAKER_02:

now? So biggest challenge is self-inflicted I ended up leaving my job I was a contractor at Boeing and it was a fine job I just I wasn't doing enough work for me to stay active and that's part of the reasons why I started back up at school I have enough money saved up made a calculated decision to figure out that okay I've got three months before my term ends and I've got about nine classes left and I'm I'm already familiar with most of these subjects, so I'm not learning them from a zero point, but can I get these next classes done by the end of my term so then that way I can get my second bachelor's and then move on to a cybersecurity job by the end of the summer?

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so you've got a really big goal. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you have an idea of what type of job you want to go for or

SPEAKER_02:

I'm somewhat open. I'm open to whoever's going to be paying me and has a nice office environment to work at, to be perfectly honest. But that said, more than likely, probably going to be focusing more cybersec on network type jobs, just because that's kind of my bread and butter. It's what I know. I mean, the nice thing about cybersecurity is that, you know, there's a bunch of disciplines inside of it that are, you know, you can kind of, depending on whatever your past is, you can either leverage that or focus there. Because it seems like relatively speaking, cybersec falls into, you know, let's say three major categories, in my opinion, which is networking-based, web-based, and software-based. Depending on what you're familiar with, it might make sense for what I would say to people is like, I've got a friend who is a very big software developer, and he's making the change as well right now. And so I wouldn't say for him, like, makes sense to go into the networking side of things, even though, like, if you enjoy it, hey, go follow that. But given what you already know, and what your skill set is, it might make sense to, you know, go software, but go focus on cybersecurity software, or at least reverse engineering, understanding things like that. Just to, you know, play to your strengths. Unless you really like that challenge. And you're that savant where you're like, okay, it Throw them in the deep end. Let's just go. Let's see what happens.

SPEAKER_01:

I think networking can help you out in all those areas

SPEAKER_02:

at the

SPEAKER_01:

end of the day. I kind of approach it with the OSI model.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. And I guess to better clarify, when I say networking, what I'm trying to say is more on the enterprise side of things. So firewalls and encryption or site-to-site encryption, VPNs, things like that. Because I did get some exposure to that where working at Boeing, obviously, because they work with the Department of Defense. So, you know, they have classified environments and they have an entirely separate security network team in place. But I totally agree with you. Yeah, networking, it's one of those things, it helps as a good foundation for a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00:

So you talked about you want to get a job by the end of the summer. So what does your dream job look like?

SPEAKER_02:

Ultimate dream job? I'd be in New Zealand doing cybersecurity.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, so cool.

SPEAKER_02:

That's the two-year goal. It was a three-year goal until the pandemic happened. But yeah, I really like New Zealand and the lifestyle that they have, meaning that their work-life balance is very amicable to the way I want to live my life. Fair amount of vacation time, work is not the end-all to be-all kind of how it is with us Americans or myself as an American, because I have the propensity to become a workaholic. and I don't want to stop and put things down. So, you know, the office forcing me to put things down, I think it would be beneficial. That's the pie in the sky right now. It's, you know, I would say something as I really don't know, to be perfectly honest, it'd be nice to go get a government job because I think that'd be a great resume builder. I'm looking actually into either moving to Salt Lake City because the NSA has a bunker there and a previous company I worked for works there as has headquarters there at the same time. Also looking at DC, uh, cause I have family that lives there and I really like the area.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And there's a lot of cybersecurity jobs in DC.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. And then, you know, up until recently I was looking in the PNW area, but it seems like that Austin and Austin have kind of just been a bunch of California expats, which nothing against cause I I'm in the heart of California. I'm in orange County. Okay. Um, But it seems like they've taken all the expensiveness of California with them. And I'd like to avoid that as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So, you know, that's kind of thing. Granted, D.C. is still, you know, almost just as expensive as L.A. is what it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I don't know. I like the green. I miss the green. Even just going over to the east side of Washington can be a little lonely.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And that's kind of the nice thing of where I live. I am... 10 minutes from the beach on side streets, and I'm about an hour away from every other climate you could think of. So the desert is like 30, 40 minutes. Las Vegas is three hours away. The mountains are about an hour and a half away for skiing and stuff. Santa Barbara is like two and a half hours away. San Diego is an hour and a half south. LA is 40 minutes to the north. I'm kind of lucky where I'm at. I got access to everything. We just get fires from time to time.

SPEAKER_01:

It seems like definitely a common occurrence on the West Coast these days.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you have any common myths about networking that you'd want to debunk or any interesting networking misconfigurations that might not be apparent to a total newbie?

SPEAKER_02:

It's kind of hard to say at this point because I'm in so long that I've kind of forgotten my newbie discovery phase. And I'm trying to rack my brain right now if there's things. The big thing, which is the early concept that it takes people a little bit of time to figure out is the terminology. And really, it's the network jargon that is used by non-networking people confusing things. So what I mean to say by that is a subnet is the same as a network. But a subnet mask is not a subnet. So a subnet is a neighborhood. A subnet mask is the number of houses inside of a neighborhood. And so previous job, I was working doing technical networking support for people who were audio video installers and had no networking knowledge. So it's having to, you know, very politely ask them information and then educate them at the same time but doing so with a certain level of tact is one of those things where it's like okay well the subnet mask is this and subnet is this and it's like I just give me the router IP and it's like let's start there and it's so the big thing I would say you know for myths is or I wouldn't say it's a myth, but the best thing to help you out, and I think this goes for whatever you're studying, is learn the terminology and learn the foundation, like chapters one and two of whatever book you're reading, because nine times out of 10, if you understand one and two at a theoretical level, you will understand everything else or you will be able to teach it to yourself. Granted, I don't take my own advice. I look through one and two. I'm like, yeah, I kind of know this stuff. And I'll jump straight to chapter nine. And I'm like, I don't know what's going on here. Two weeks later, okay, I'll go back and I'll read chapter one.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's like where all the interesting stuff is, right? Like the security chapters are all the way at the end. And it's like, well, I just want to skip to the end.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but then you get to concepts and you're just like, I don't, what, like, how does this work? wait a minute, how am I supposed to know this? And you're like, okay, hold on. It's being able to acknowledge and reflect that, yeah, I really don't know what's going on here. I am a fool. Let me go back. Let me educate myself. And let's see if I, after I read that chapter, come back, read chapter nine. Does this make sense now? And the short answer is yes. It's just, I have to fail before I can succeed. I can't just be smart and read chapters one, two, three, four.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I definitely fill in the deep end a lot. I know if I'm trying to read a request for comment or a white paper on some new attack or something, I end up having to do lots of background research and look stuff up a lot. I think you have to get used to it in this field of not knowing what the heck is going on, but be willing to go out there and figure out what the individual components of it are.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think the big thing really is that you have to get very comfortable with saying, I don't know, and realize that you might say, I don't know, to people you don't want to say that to. Not that that person is going to hold it against you, but depending on what their teaching style is, say it's somebody knowledgeable, they might not be the most newbie-friendly teacher. It's like, well, How do you not know this? It's this, this, and this. But if you're okay with that, you know, quick sting of emotion of saying like, I'm sorry, I don't know. If you can get over that, things become a lot easier very quickly because then you can go find out the smart people and be like, hey, I don't understand this. What am I missing? Is this, is XYZ equal to ABC? Like, no, no, no, no, no. You got to go the other way. It's like, oh, okay. You know, it's one of those things I'd say that's a big thing or myth is that you have to be willing to you know raise your hand and say like I don't know what I'm doing because it's a lot easier to get help that way to say I don't know what I'm doing rather than just you know trying to do the fake it till you make it

SPEAKER_01:

thing I think going back to people just starting out and trying to get going I think a lot of people are hesitant to ask for help and that's like one of the biggest stumbling blocks

SPEAKER_02:

yeah always that for help like it's it's not going to be fun for the first bit but you might get a piece of information and you know you might do some google foo and it might lead you down the correct path you just be okay with the sting it's you know it's not the thing i kind of have to had to tell myself early on was it's not a personal thing you know it's just i don't even know what it is it's they don't hate me as a person it's just i'm shocking them to a certain degree And it's, okay, cool. Shock is over. It's done. Let's move on. And you can go from there.

SPEAKER_00:

Outside of normal academic skills, what skills do you think are needed to be a good student or learner?

SPEAKER_02:

Really the big thing, and this is one of those things actually that I've been dealing with for the past two weeks, it's understanding yourself and being able to have conversations with yourself and figure out where you are. currently working on my SEC plus certification. And it's one of those things that I feel I should be able to, you know, take the test. And I've been working on it for like two months now. So by all accounts, I should be ready to take the test. However, every time I take a practice test, I'm always scoring, you know, in a, let's say 65 to 78 range. And it's one of those things where it's like, I know, I know the that area. I want to be up above 85%. It took me really until this week to come to terms and give myself permission that this is taking longer than expected. That's fine. It's not necessarily a hard test, but it's not necessarily an easy test. Maybe you need to back off a little bit and clear your mind and do something else and focus on something else and yeah there was a day or two in there where I should have been studying and video games was on the docket so that's what I did but at the same time you know it's one of those things where if I'm still not feeling like I am being successful or I'm making any type of meaningful progress then I do a hard switch and at WGU it's actually very easy to do this or I find it very easy to do this is I just go straight to another class whatever class I have in my degree I just like okay we're going here now, like we're stopping everything on this class, because we're not making any headway. We're going to go over here, everything is 100% on this side now. And so, you know, I started up a new class and it just happened to be a class, learning how to use and map and Wireshark and those are two things that I, I wouldn't say I am a master in by any means but I think I'm pretty proficient based on, you know, the amount of try hack me hack the box, NCL, and other CT I was like, okay, cool. I was like, I'm already familiar with a lot of this content. And I was like, there's going to be a couple of key things I can pick up here. Automatically, I'm already at a much better place than I was mentally speaking, because I'm already set up for success. And kind of my ultimate goal there is to trick myself into completing that class and completing it what I would think is in a very reasonable timeframe, come off it with some, you know, happy thoughts. thoughts, lack of a better term, and then go back into the security plus class and be like, okay, cool. I know I'm not an idiot. I know I'm smart. I just did that class. I did it well. It's like, let's go back, you know, fresh mind, fresh eyes, and let's reattack this class. And maybe something was clicked or something has shifted in my knowledge. So I can go ahead and, you know, get a better foothold than I did before. To kind of circle back around to the question is, it's you really got to be in tune with yourself and you have to be able to you know step away from yourself and objectively you know look at yourself as a third person I was like am I making good decisions here or am I just following a schedule it also helps to know what type of person you are like if you I'm not the type of person who can say every morning 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. I'm going to be studying that's the only thing I'm doing for four hours it's really I was like okay when I eat and play with the cats. I'll try and get in there around 7, 7.30-ish. It's figuring out what works for you, but then figuring out what works for you and how to make it work at the most effective way possible.

SPEAKER_00:

That's good advice. Be kind to yourself. If what you're doing isn't working and it's stressing you out, change paths for a bit and come back to it later.

SPEAKER_02:

It's kind of hard to be I don't want to say it's hard. What I'm trying to say is of the friend group that I have of students at school, there's a couple guys that are just, they're all stars. They're just like, bing, bing, boom. They got things done instantly. And they have every CompTIA certification. It's like, oh, that class was easy. And it's okay. I know what that type of personality is. I've been in the world long enough. I know how and why they are successful. But I also know that's not me and that's not how I'm successful. So it's, you know, it's hard. The thing I have to tell myself quite frequently is we compare ourselves to the highlight reels of others. And it's one of those things where it's like they're successful because I can only see what they're successful at. They're not telling me what they failed at. Now, if I ask them about it, they probably will. And they're, you know, I'd get a better understanding of their trials and tribulations. But for me, it's I know everything I failed at and everything I failed at is, you where everything I've been successful at has only been 10%. It's being able to take a step back and internalize that they're successful just as much as I'm successful and they fail just as much as I fail. But it's... You can't compare yourself to someone else based on, you know, what they've been doing and based on what you're doing. You have to just release that energy to get all new age. As Bruce Lee would say, be like water.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think those are all good points. Talking about comparing yourself to others. One of our previous guests, Jolene, if you look at that from the outside, it's like, oh my goodness, nine months. How is this even possible? But then you don't realize that she's doing you know, like 50 hours a week or whatnot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

She, she completed her degree in nine months. That

SPEAKER_02:

was,

SPEAKER_00:

that was her mission. And yeah. Yeah. No,

SPEAKER_02:

it's incredible. Uh, and even considering, you know, what, uh, the other factors was that she, she was dealing with and, you know, everything else, it's, she was motivated.

SPEAKER_03:

She

SPEAKER_02:

had a goal. She went for it and boom, she knew how to make things work for her. And, you know, you know, where to take those liberties. And that's kind of the key thing is if you can know where you can bend the rules when you need to break the rules, that type of thing, things, you know, work out in your favor a little bit more. The one thing I want to also drop in here, one of my favorite quotes in my email signatures as well, and this is one of those things that grounds me a little bit, is the Nobel physicist Niels Bohr, who I believe once he got the Nobel Prize in physics, Heineken installed a tap to his house to always dispense beer for the rest of his life. But he has a quote and it's attributed to him. And the quote is the master of any one discipline is the person who has made every mistake possible for a very small field. Just because some people are masters, they're only masters because they have failed a thousand more times than they have succeeded. A

SPEAKER_01:

lot of learning to be done. One of the interesting things I've seen people talk about 10,000 hours of mastery versus like 20 hours to learn a new skill or something like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Malcolm Gladwell versus the, uh, I think there was a guy who did a Ted X, uh, ukulele talk. Yeah. Yeah. The, the guy who I'm really jiving on right now, I just found him this week and I picked up one of his books, uh, Simon Sinek, S I N E K. His book is the infinite game. And the first chapter is pretty illuminating because it describes a or things that I have in my head. If I ran a business, this is how I would do it. And the basic thing is that there's two types of games. There are infinite game and the finite game. Finite game is a sports game. It's got a beginning, it's got an end, and there's rules. The infinite game is players can come and go as they choose. There are no set rules. There are no winners. There are no losers. Life is a infinite game. Governments are an infinite game. And what What he goes through and talks about in the book is, you know, how business leaders who take the mindset of an infinite business versus a finite business and don't have winners and losers end up doing better overall. A really good example he uses is George Eastman, who created Kodak, one of the first companies, you know, back in the 1800s, probably 1900s, probably late 18, early 19. First company to give paid time off to give tuition reimbursement. to workers because you know it's I mean that's still radical stuff now but imagine you know 100 years ago it was like it's insane but you create a culture that people want to stay and they want to help the business you create a community so really jiving on his stuff right now and he's kind of a serial optimist and but it's not saccharine you know it's much more it's optimist with some pragmatism attached to it.

SPEAKER_01:

I appreciate that. As somebody who does networking, do you deal with Wi-Fi at all?

SPEAKER_02:

Wi-Fi, yeah. I used to have to coach people through how to do site surveys and Wi-Fi optimization over the phone without really being able to show them physically. Granted, I had things like go to my PC and TeamViewer where I could jump onto their system but had to show them using different tools and techniques as waterfall displays and radio or RF output and frequencies. And then just telling people why you can't put a wireless access point inside of a stainless steel box.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. My favorite is the good old wall filing cabinets. And we're going to stick it in the corner with all the filing cabinets.

SPEAKER_02:

So So the previous company I worked for, they're a smart home automation company, very high end, considered to be the Cadillac of them. So much to the point, they don't sell to customers, only to dealers. At least once a day, we'd get a call and we're like, hey, I have poor Wi-Fi range. Cool. Where's the AP? Oh, it's behind the TV. Okay, so you want a radio frequency transmitter to be shooting through a giant piece of glass and metal that's electrified, and you expect it to work flawlessly. I was like, how does that work, man? Yeah, there's a lot of that type of stuff. And it's just, some of it's fun. Some of it, there were a couple of calls where I got to brainstorm with some of the guys. We're like, well, hey, how can I stop this Wi-Fi bleed from one room to the other? And the solution we end up coming up with was marine grade copper infused paint. So we could make a Faraday cage because he didn't want the Wi-Fi bleed going through through the floor from the basement to the first floor. And I was like, look, I was like, this should work. I can't say whether or not it will, but the concept of the Faraday cage is it's, it's copper mesh and it's going to block stuff. So it's not going to obliterate the signal, but it is going to severely hamper any bleed coming through.

SPEAKER_01:

It's definitely some of the more interesting experiments. For example, like those anti-static bag you get with electronics, you can Leo them up and get similar effects. So it can be kind of fun to play around with those different cell phones and see which one will go out with how many layers of the bags or whatnot.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the other kind of the thing that really made me start to understand or respect Wi-Fi is working with dealers who were working in what I would call Miami homes, which are, you know, homes in Miami that are reinforced concrete. So, you know, it's concrete with rebar in it. So a literal Faraday a cage and it's the sheer amount of access points they have to put inside of the building, you know, because even from room to room, you won't get any bleed. And those are kind of the best and worst situations because it's like, Hey, just throw more access points into each room and you're going to be fine. But at the same time, Hey, buy more products. It's going to be more expensive.

SPEAKER_01:

As far as doing this stuff on the flight. Yeah. Like all I've ever had is, you know, like Wi-Fi Analyzer, any of those other apps on my phone?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, the one that I really like, and I think it's on the iPhone, it's definitely on Android, and it's been my go-to for at least six, seven years, is NetAnalyzer. It gives you all of your information for your Wi-Fi, for your cell connection, as well as network information, and has land scan capabilities on it. You can do do some ping tests, some NS lookup tests on there. And it's free. And so at a glance, if you just need quick information, it's there. It gives you the RSSI or signal strength for what you're doing. And you can switch between the different Wi-Fi channels. Or it will tell you what Wi-Fi channels. And you can also switch between the different frequencies, so the 2.4 and the 5.

SPEAKER_01:

Very cool. Have you used the Fing app at all?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, everybody, all the dealers, uh, used thing and loved thing and nothing wrong with it. Uh, just never used it. Cause I think it was at the time it was all just iOS. They wasn't on Android. Um, so it was like, okay, I was like, uh, you know, I like this. And at the same time, it's the, the other reason why, uh, we, or I didn't use it is it's on the, it was on the person's phone, whoever I was helping. And if I'm helping you over the phone, I can't see that. So most of the time, uh, my go-to, uh, for a land scan tool was like advanced IP scanner, just because it's, it's cheap. It's or it's free and it's got a GUI. So the techs can use it. Whereas if the person had it on their computer, then, you know, I'd probably go straight to end map, but that was a, you know, a one in 1000 type thing. Most people didn't have that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I just ended up using a thing half the time because I, my, before I I realized I needed to actually reserve the lease for my, the DHCP lease for my Raspberry Pi. It always changes every time I reboot my Pi, right? It's like, I'm a thing scared, and like, oh, there it is again.

SPEAKER_02:

Where'd it go? Trust me, I'd still do that, and I've got, I'm running a PFSense with an intrusion detection system, prevention system. I'm the classic case of the mechanic who doesn't take care of their car for my home network, if that makes sense. I'm trying to be better, and in In fact, I'm doing a little home project now where I've got a NAS using TrueNAS. And I am trying to take all of the files off of that so I can rebuild it. Because when I first built it, I just threw whatever hard drives I had laying around into it. So I got a mix, mismatch of stuff. Now I've got some Western Digital Red 3 terabytes that I'm going to throw in there to raid them out. But I'm trying to just... Just make things nice and clean because I've got the time and I probably should have done this a long time ago. From

SPEAKER_00:

today, what is the number one takeaway you think our listeners should take?

SPEAKER_02:

Be okay with failing. Expect to fail. Get comfortable with it. The classic thing is the measure of a person's not how many times they fell off the horse, it's how many times they got back up on it. Be okay with failing because failing, you learn what not to do. I am more scared of succeeding because it's like, well, why did it work? It's a classic programmer thing where you're like, oh, I got an error. Okay, let me try and debug. Oh, well, now it works. Well, wait a minute. I didn't change anything. Why is this working now? It's like, uh-oh. Be very comfortable with failing and know that if you're failing, you are actually moving forward.

SPEAKER_00:

How should our listeners connect with you online if they want to reach out to you

SPEAKER_02:

I am the only person with this handle thankfully and I've been rocking it since I was like 13 I go by Otter Bob so O-T-T-E-R B-A-U-B and you can find me all over the place I just ask for a little bit of forgiveness because like I said I've been running it since I was 13 so previous discretions are probably still on full display even though I think I have most of them set to private. I don't think I've done anything really bad. I've got to imagine I've said some stupid things at some point in time. We're all human. I know I've definitely grown since I was 13. I apologize in advance. It's not my fault.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for coming today, Colin. It was a pleasure having you.

SPEAKER_02:

Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_00:

Thanks for listening to the Security months and remember if it seems overwhelming just keep chipping away at it