HACKINT

Time continues to fly but I wanted to give an update that should last for awhile.

I recorded a number of videos to launch hackINT Academy but the beta classes I taught reinforced two thought processes.

1. Although plenty of people have good intentions, those who I have trained up to become instructors just haven’t worked out. Life simply gets in the way and without extremely passionate people it just hasn’t worked.

2. The students I’m targeting (entry level) really needed guided instruction. YouTube based videos and online training just isn’t adequate for most. My opinion on this became more solidified after I had people on my team at work take SANS Online training. I have a lot of respect for SANS and they’ve done some great things; but even my more advanced teammates got little value out of an online class compared to in person.

Therefore, I will not be posting my video classes nor launching hackINT Academy.  Instead, I am going to continue hosting training classes in my free weekends. I’ve hosted 3 these last two months already with another one coming up before I move to San Antonio. At San Antonio I plan to get involved with AFCEA and teach additional classes once I settle in (training en route so I should be in San Antonio in August).

The second course of action is that I will be (over time) taking my material and making an intro-to-intermediate level class to put up at http://opensecuritytraining.info/

Open Security Training has existed longer than my hackINT concept but I did not know about them until recently; ultimately they’ve done better with the online training than I could have as a side hobby.  I encourage everyone to check them out. I plan to have a full day length course to add on there once I settle in San Antonio instead of trying to repeat the process and launch my own website.

Once in San Antonio I will be relying on this site more to advertise out the classes I’m hosting.

All the best,
Rob

The first ever HACKINT training class is going to be offered this Friday and Saturday (18th-19th) on Ramstein Air Base.  Originally I was just going to have a small event where I brought in people already knowledgeable with hacking to try out the King-of-the-Hill competition on my server.  Since I bought the server and this is my first time loading up the challenge on it I wanted to stress test it against multiple people hacking in preparation for HACKINT 2012 this summer.  However, as I was getting ready for the event there were quite a few people asking me if I could teach them some of the more basic concepts and tools to hacking.  It made sense to go ahead and wrap the stress test and class all into one.  All in all a neat way for the origin to the class.

That being said, I’m sure I’m going to be hitting some obstacles with the class this weekend.  Hopefully since the class is small, only about 10 members, and free there will be some patience with my server equipment and the virtual machines.  Luckily, one of the guys I work with, Eric Trombly, has volunteered to help teach the class with me and to get into the classroom all this week to work out any bugs.  We’ve got a long week ahead of us to get everything working perfectly but I’m optimistic and very excited about the class this weekend.