Tweet
After lurking in the forums for a few days and reading all of the rules I could find on the board, I have finally decided to post my first blog. Hopefully, I don't break any traditions or unspoken rules in this post. If so, please feel free to delete this post and call me names. (Feel free to call me names regardless)
Frankly, I'm a little leery of giving out too much information on a blog post on this site. Maybe it's just paranoia, or maybe it's just my disdain for social networking. Maybe it seems like this would probably be one of the worst sites on the Internet to post "Here's some info about me" data. That said, I guess I find this community interesting in that there is paradox in rules or a "Catch-22" to this predicament. Where you must be known to get into the community, yet it is not wise to give the community information.
It's interesting, because if this were any other technology forum I would announce my work history and college degrees, and then everyone could look up my name and verify my accomplishments. With the anonymity here it somehow feels out of place though. It seems like bragging, boasting, and posting with a swagger that may be construed as being an ass. This is not the image I wish to portray.
I find it difficult to believe that anyone cares what some random poster's college degrees are in or what certifications they hold. I also find little help in saying how many years I have worked in the computer industry. It seems more of an "asshat" move to tout college degrees and computer knowledge, especially when there are so many competent individuals without these pieces of paper and backgrounds. Many know much more than I do.
Although I have listened to DEFCON from the RSS feeds, I have yet to attend my first DEFCON. My drinking prowess has yet to show itself to the hacker community. My knowledge is yet untested. My status is yet unknown.
So here I find myself, a newbie to the community, with not much more to say other than that. Hopefully, I will have more interesting thought-provoking posts in the future. Those which you can use to ascertain my usefulness to this forum or to this community. I look forward to what the future may bring.
I do intend to post my knowledge on this forum and hopefully to also gain more knowledge from others in the process. Your post is very informative, but I think I leave reading it with a few questions I hope you could answer. I was mostly interested on your comment:
"You can participate in security lists, on the forums, and elsewhere"
Could you or someone else elaborate more on this?
When scanning the Internet I found hundreds of forums, security lists, IRC channels, and etc. Finding the information seems to be the easy part; however, refining the search seems to prove quite difficult. There are just too many good places for hacker information and community on the Internet. Unfortunately, there is not enough time in the day to view them all. Assuming you were willing to take the role of David Letterman, could you help me filter my search to the top 10 or so in your experience?
Some forums:
http://forums.remote-exploit.org - BT4 Forums
http://forums.heorot.net/ - De-Ice.net forums (nice set of tools)
Podcasts:
http://www.exoticliability.com/
http://pauldotcom.com
Also, awesome post TheCotMan