HACKINT

Tom Hamlyn was kind enough to take pictures during the HACKINT 2012 competition which are posted below.  At the next AFCEA luncheon we’ll be presenting an award to each of the team members from Team TracerT for taking first place in the competition.  They were truly an awesome group and the AF is lucky to have such skilled operators.  More importantly they were humble and helped out the other teams’ members who were less trained when they ran into issues.  I’ve never seen that at a hacking competition before and was proud to have it happen amongst Air Force members.

Eric Trombly and I have been working hard to finalize the edits to the Fundamentals of Hacking class.  The next offering (already full) is August 4th and it will be one of the last times I teach the Fundamentals of Hacking class at Ramstein AB.  Eric has proven to be incredibly competent and passionate about teaching so he will be taking over the reins of the class at Ramstein which will allow the class to be taught more often.  I will take the class and be teaching around the Frankfurt area where I currently live.  Furthermore, I’m going to start working on a Forensics class now that the Fundamentals of Hacking class is at a solid state.

There are others who have approached HACKINT about becoming instructors and teaching the class at their location; very exciting!  We will be incorporating a new system at HACKINT where we have Assistant Instructors, Instructors and Lead Instructors.  An Assistant Instructor is someone who wants to volunteer/help out teaching alongside an Instructor.  After an Assistant Instructor teaches alongside an Instructor for a few classes they can become an Instructor and teach on their own.  A Lead Instructor is someone who develops/guides a course and how it is developed and carried on.  All along the way those who help teach at every level will (besides just doing good work for the future generation) be rewarded with professional references and resume building material from the HACKINT staff.

All in all we at HACKINT are very excited about the level of support not only from the Ramstein AB and AFCEA community but those who have reached out with support from outside our community.  Thanks again and all the best!

Setting up for HACKINT 2012

Team TracerT getting setup before the competition

Announcing the rules before the competition kicks off

The 2nd ever HACKINT class was completed today.  Eric Trombly and I remodeled the two day class we were teaching to fit everything in to one day.  We went through the Hacker’s Methodology and then useful tools/tactics from regex to BackTrack.  The students (we had a full class of 11) came in with no experience in hacking and left understanding the methodology and having hands on experience cracking passwords, creating keyloggers, scanning/picking vulnerabilities, remotely exploiting machines, and more.  It really speaks volumes about the people in the Air Force to be honest.  I enjoy teaching/talking about cyber so I get a lot of joy in the opportunity to do this class.  But when you view people like Eric and the students who are so passionate about learning/teaching that they give up 10 hours of their free time on a Saturday it’s hard not to feel really good about the future of the cyberspace domain.  I’ll reemphasize that.  Students give up 10 hours of their free time on a Saturday to come learn about hacking/cyber because they are interested in the future of the cyber domain.  I am continually honored to serve among people I can admire and respect so greatly.

I plan to continue to rework the class to add in some more features/tools and to fine tune it.  I will also continue teaching the class 1-3 times a month; as long as I keep having interested and passionate students it is a privilege.   After I get most of the guys/gals on Ramstein that are interested in the class through it I’m going to start developing the Fundamentals of Forensics class for HACKINT and start offering that.

All the best,
Robert

“Always learning, always teaching.”

I’m pleased to announce that HACKINT will be offering the Fundamentals to Hacking course on Ramstein AB on June 30th.  This is the second time the class has been taught and this course has been reserved by one of the Group’s on base.  It’s great to hear the feedback from people that have taken the course as well as those who want to attend.  For a Group to request the course is particularly exciting and shows the interest for this kind of material.  I believe that courses like this motivate people to gain interest in the cyberspace domain and ultimately learn more.  We all use the Internet whether you are a cyberspace operator or you just enjoy browsing on your personal computer.   The skills developed in the cyberspace domain, even if fundamental, prepare users in any role to better defend their computers.  Almost as equally important, this material is fun and challenges people to think in ways they have not before; this is beneficial in every aspect of life.

Stepping away from the cyber pulpit for a second though…I’d like to mention that preparations are still underway for HACKINT 2012 which will be held on Ramstein AB at the Technology Expo put on by AFCEA Chapter 158.  For more information check the links on this website.  I will post more when teams start registering.

All the best,

Robert

Earlier today I wrapped up teaching the first ever HACKINT course – Fundamentals of Hacking.  Ten students from various Squadrons across Ramstein Air Base, Germany came together to take part in the two day course.  As it was the first ever offering of the class there were definitely some speed bumps and issues that had to be resolved on the fly.  Luckily, I had Eric Trombly as my assistant instructor and technical director to help me out.  He was critical in teaching the students about Openvas, helping the students in configuring their systems, and answering random Linux questions (his specialty).  All in all it was a great experience and I was really impressed with the students.

The course started out by covering the ethics and legality of hacking (over and over again).  From there students learned how to use and configure BackTrack 5 Live cds before moving on to installing BackTrack as the OS on the computers in the lab.  Eric and I then taught the steps to the Hacker Methodology before moving on to teaching about nmap, the power of the command line vs. GUIs, and then about  Openvas and various regex commands.  The course culminated in giving students hands on hacking experience with using BackTrack against Vulnerable Machines that I set up on my personal server.  I taught the students how to look for vulnerable services, pick out the best exploits, and gaining a remote shell on their targets.  The students then moved into cracking passwords, capturing screenshots of compromised computers, and gaining an understanding of privilege escalation and pivoting. Honestly, for a fundamentals class this was a huge information dump for the students yet they excelled at every turn.  More than that, they were patient with me as I had to overcome various issues (for example a Windows 98 VM proved to be much more of a challenge than it ever should have been).

The students gave me a lot of positive and constructive feedback for making the course better.  For example, I’ll be working on creating some demo videos, screenshots of examples, and step by step instructions for various sections instead of the less organized approach to teaching I tried.  As much as the students learned over these past two days I equally learned about teaching.  I have to admit it was a joyous and proud moment to be able to teach this class.  I’m looking forward to offering it again soon.

Overall, Eric and I were very impressed with the students’ work and the conversations they had.  I was personally inspired to see how eager they were to take the information back to their Squadrons and peers.  These skills will not only allow them to hack machines and develop a niche of their own but to do so ethically and ultimately become better network defenders.  On the morning of the second day I started off the class with Johnny Long’s “No-Tech Hacking” DEFCON 15 talk; as I heard the students laugh and enjoy the video it became obvious that we have some future hackers on our hands.

Eric Trombly teaching at HACKINT's first class

Robert Lee teaching at the first HACKINT class