int0x80

Pardon my vague reply. Different companies have different needs, and "net sec" vs. "info sec" may just be a difference in terminology based on the company. The important question is: What do you want to do? Which ties in with my post here.

I'm not a guru; but really it comes down to figuring out what you want to do. I wanted to do RE, so I started spending more of my free time doing crackmes, analyzing malware, and cracking software. Figure out what you want to do, learn what that entails, set goals, and then do it. Get stuck/frustrated? Try harder, no excuses, etc.

Just get new cards. Banks and creditors use computers, they can setup new accounts in a few seconds and will overnight you new cards. Change all your passwords and use KeePass. These are all more legal than violating the ever-expanding Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Since you're not concerned about the ex stealing money from you, I would be worried about who else has access to the computer. Maybe you've heard of this cybercrime thing :(

Possibly a mis-read as you will need to hit enter twice to create more code not in the indented block. Example: >>> x = 4 >>> while x > 0: ... print('x' * x) ... x -= 1{Enter} ...{Enter} xxxx xxx xx x >>> int0x80 = 'hax' >>> print int0x80 hax The spots with {Enter} are where the Enter key was pressed.

Tab

I think most people use either flasm or swftools for analyzing swf. IDA also has a SWF plugin, if you're so inclined. It's pretty easy to analyze SWF malware, though I haven't looked at any for a while.

FTP daemons have vulns (as mentioned by Jason Cooper) and are sometimes configured improperly. The lack of encryption is also an obvious problem. My personal grief with FTP is that the default in many setups is to transfer in ASCII mode; which appends 0x0a after any 0x0d byte in a file. This behavior corrupts any file that gets transferred if BINARY mode is not used -- possibly the dumbest thing ever.

For web hosting, just use a third party for any heavy content (vimeo/youtube for videos, flickr/imgur for photos, etc). At 50KB/s, your SSH tunnel will still be faster, with more integrity, than tor.

Could you put Linux on a retired system (desktop/laptop/etc) and leave it hooked to your parents' internet connection? This way you have full control of the remote system without having to pay for hosting. Just offering another option since I was a poor university student.

There are lots of factors here including, but not limited to, employer, location, et al. For example, are you looking at a company with 100 servers spread across multiple countries/continents? Or an organization with 100 employees in one floor of a building who just need a "computer guy"? There are websites that will be able to answer your question much more specifically based on relevant factors; do a google.

Diggs has a good point, too, which is to just assume that any conversation on a mobile phone is being monitored or recorded by some gov agency. So only have benign types of conversations on your phone; and save the other conversations for secure channels :) But back to OP, to my knowledge there is not any way for a consumer to detect when you are being actively monitored.

tcpxtract is pretty much scalpel for pcap, I believe the config files are even compatible (or the format is at least extremely similar if not identical) :)

If you are looking for new registrar recommendations, I moved my domains to https://gandi.net and they have been great. They are a 'No BS' company -- https://www.gandi.net/no-bullshit

I'm ok with him getting his ass kicked lol

I don't, sorry. I guess if you can get your voice channel to data, maybe through something like Skype or Google Voice, then the channel and its contents could be encrypted? But I don't really know much about the protocols in use on phones and mobile networks. I figure the way to go is to purchase pre-pay phones every week with cash and don't take a phone with you when you make the purchase. This is one aspect that TV/movies probably have right lol.

Just zero out the MBR. Only takes 512 bytes and can easily be restored after you make nice with your current nemesis. dd if=/dev/zero bs=512 count=1 of=/dev/sda To fix, boot Windows disc and use FIXMBR. The rest of the data on the drive will be fine and the partitions can still be mounted and accessed if necessary.

Wireshark can pull files out of pcap. Just 'follow the TCP conversation', highlight the file contents, and point-click your way to a standalone file. That is a pretty manual process though, so I'd want something automated or scriptable with 200+ pcaps to process. I've used tcpxtract in the past with great success. Can you kick off an Ubuntu or Debian VM and dump the pcaps in there? tcpxtract will make fast work of them once you set up the signatures.

Actually what I meant was all the surveillance conducted on citizens by the gov. Warrantless wiretaps, FISA (now with bonus retroactive immunity), et al. AT&T C/O National Security Agency 611 Folsom Street #641A San Francsico, CA 94107 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

The new DerbyCon site looks great. Nice work, digip :D I am already looking forward to next year. http://www.derbycon.com/

Did they try turning it off and on again? Is it plugged in? I kid, I kid. If the network seems to be generally fine for these users and only a few sites are problematic, I would fire up a sniffer and go from there. Span a port on the switch, or whatever the cool kids do these days, and grab some packets.

Internet is still wide-open; it's fantastic, a huge virtual playground :)

Do you have a cell phone with a major provider? If so, then yes, you are being traced.

Cool homework, bro.

When you solve something, please post the solution for future viewers.

Glad to see you're moving forward with this. As a side note, when you have big chunks of code to post, consider using pastebin or pastie :]