Recovering Luddite?

Growing up Mennonite in Lancaster County with no computer, and no television, only to become a Digital Forensic Analyst and Incident Response Specialist living in New York City, has been quite a journey. My friends tell me the uniqueness of my life requires a blog, but I tell them, I haven't changed much, really.

Batch ip Look-Up Tool (Automated)

I first met Garth Bruen over a year ago after hearing him speak at a security conference. His company KnujOn has pioneered some interesting methods for fighting illegal online activity.

Recently tasked with culling an investigative report involving several thousand ip addresses (after de-duping), I Reached-out to Garth to ask him if he was aware of any automated ip look-up tools. I had found a few ip look-up Web sites that spit back all the information I needed for my report
(http://ip-adress.com/ip_tracer and http://whatismyipaddress.com/ for example), however my report was quite detailed, and the look-up sites placed limits on their number of daily inquiries as well as the type of data one could extract from those queries.

Turns out, Garth and team had run into a similar issue a few years ago, so they decided to write their own tool to perform the aforementioned types of extractions. KnujOn charges a reasonable fee to perform batch ip look-ups and extractions, but I am confident you won't be disappointed with what you get for the price.

Red-Tailed Hawk Pale Male Bathing

After what seemed like months of rain, Manhattan was finally blessed with a gorgeous day, and I finally logged-off! I met up with some birding buddies, and we headed into Central Park to see what we could see. We came across a Red-Tailed Hawk (that we believe was Pale Male), taking a bath in a stream. I didn't get to the camera in time to tape the bath, but you can see him drying off in these video clips:

Catching Up

2009 was a busy year, both personally and professionally. Since I can't discuss the details of my professional work, I will do my best to fill you in on the rest of what I've been up to.

In the second half of 2009, I stopped blogging so that I could spend that time contributing to a new SANS course, 565 Data Leakage Prevention. The course debuted last month in New Orleans, and will be offered again in Baltimore (June 2010). I had a great time creating a ton of PowerPoint slides and a couple of the labs used in the course. If you are at all concerned about DLP, this course is for you.

2009 was a challenging year for many families, so I ramped-up the number of machines that I refurbish for give-away. Thanks to street-finds and donations from a growing network of friends and colleagues who heard about the work that I perform, I donated about 8 PC's and laptops in 2009 to needy families (all drives were wiped to former DoD standard).

I just began planning my next project, an annual fund-raiser for our church's soup kitchen, so if you're a fan you should be getting an invitation soon.

Bookworm Frolic

Don't miss the upcoming "Bookworm Frolic Used Book Sale" at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society on August 12-15, 2009. I recently hauled a trunkful of very old Mennonite hymnals, texts in German and other historical books. The lot was a donation from the Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship, along with a few of my own thrown in for good measure. The load filled the trunk of Frank Shirk's Buick, below, with more boxes lining the back seat:


Photo Credit: Frank Shirk (2009)

Baby Hawks Fledge

Forget the computer, there are baby hawks jumping around in the nest! Check out what I saw today!

My "Hakin9" Magazine Article

I hope you enjoy my article in this month's "Hakin9" magazine, I stopped by the bookstore today and I noticed it on the stand. You can get it at Barnes & Noble or direct from the publisher.