The Nation of Tokelau

Tokelau is a self-governing territory of New Zealand consisting of three coral atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean. It lies north of the Samoan Islands, east of Tuvala, south of the Phoenix Islands and northwest of the Cook Islands. It's believed that the islands were first settled approximately 1000 years ago. Tokelau is a free and democratic nation with no political parties, holding elections every 3 years. And Tokelau is the first 100% solar powered nation in the world.

So why the interest in this small group of islands in the Pacific?  Well, it's not the islands, the nation, or even the people per se that interest me, it's their ccTLD, .tk that I have recently become aware of.  Tokelau allows any individual to register a domain under this ccTLD, and with few restrictions (such as sexual, drug, hate and firearms content), users and small businesses may register any number of domains free of charge.  "Special" .tk domains, such as those containing the trademark domain names for most Fortune 500 companies must be purchased. Users may also opt to forward their web and email traffic.

The nation of Tokelau boasts a population of 1,499 as of the October 2016 census, good for 237th in the world.  What makes this small population most remarkable is the fact that more than 28 million domains have been registered under the .tk ccTLD.  According to a McAfee survey in 2006, .tk domains were twice as likely to be used for "unwanted behaviors" when compared to the global average. In 2010, the Anti-Phishing Working Group noted that 21.5% of all worldwide phishing originated from .tk domains.

So what does this mean for you?  Have you ever done legitimate business with a person or organization coming from a .tk domain?  I can't say that I have.  And other than the free domain registration (which hardly matters with what GoDaddy and other registrars are selling domains for these days), why would anyone want to register their domain with such a small, and otherwise unknown nation?  They claim to have rules, but are clearly not enforcing them. And how could they with 28 million domains and counting registered? As of right now, it's probably safe to just blacklist the entire .tk for now.

Thoughts on the CISSP

Saturday afternoon, I took the CISSP exam and passed.  Not only is this a sweet certification on my resume, it's the final requirement for my Masters degree.  So all in all, a pretty awesome weekend, even though it was quite stressful leading up with so much riding on this exam.

So the first thing that stands out on this exam is just how long it is.  250 questions long and by far the longest exam I've ever taken either for a certification or in academia.  I'm normally a fast test taker, and it still took me around 2.5 hours to complete.  I can't even imagine someone who is a slow test taker and up against the clock.

My road to success on this exam is not for everybody.  In 2008, I decided to use what I had left of GI Bill eligibility and make a career change into I.T.  Some of my earliest classes were infosec related, and I first read Shon Harris's incredible CISSP All-in-One Exam Guide somewhere in the neighborhood of 2009 as it was the textbook for a couple classes.  From there I went on to study Information Assurance at Eastern Michigan University, earning a Bachelors in 2012.  Many of these classes focused around CISSP topics.  Three years later I went back to Eastern to pursue a Masters degree, and many of these classes also focused on CISSP topics.  Everything from a class on Risk Management in my undergrad days, through graduate classes on Business Continuity and Incident Management recently.

For the capstone of my Masters program, I chose the option of taking this exam, and dedicated the semester to studying for it.  Over the course of the semester, I read Eric Conrad's CISSP Study Guide and Adam Gordon's Official Guide to the CISSP CBK, both on Books 24x7 (thanks EMU!).  I also watched a great video series on FedVTE (thanks government contracting position!).  I took it one domain at a time, first reading the chapter in Eric Conrad's book, watching the video, then reading the chapter in Adam Gordon's book, using each sources practice questions to gauge my progress before moving on to the next source.  Along the way, I kept notes on my strong and weak points of each domain (a learning log was a requirement of the class, otherwise I may not have) and spent the last couple weeks of the semester reviewing all the areas I wasn't comfortable with.

For anyone considering taking the exam, know that this isn't like your typical Cisco or Microsoft exam.  For those, you can almost always find a seat at a nearby testing center on the day you prefer to take your exam.  Not so with the CISSP.  In mid-February when I went to book the exam, I could find a couple seats in early March (way too soon!) or mid to late April, so I took it April 15.  My due date to present proof of passing was April 17, so there was no second chance.  So if you're up against the clock, either for work or school, book sooner than later.  I also ended up having to go with a testing center that was a little over an hour drive from my house, where as the one I normally go to is 15 minutes away.  I'm assuming it's the 6 hours you get for this, but there simply isn't a lot of available seats for this exam.  At least in early 2017 for the Detroit and Ann Arbor areas.

So no rest for the weary, its on to the next thing.  I'm initially leaning towards getting the "Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA: Windows Server 2016" knocked out now before Microsoft drops all the 2012 exams off of the list of available qualifications for partner status.  That wasn't a fun scramble when they dropped the 2008 exams.  Without school taking precedent in my mind, I probably won't take 6 to 9 months to prepare for a test this time.

Power On virtual machine stuck at 35%

Here's  just a quick little blurb about a problem I ran into this morning.  The cables for my SAS controller FINALLY arrived yesterday, so I installed them last night.  With the additional storage now available, I moved a couple VMs over to give the existing datastore some breathing room.

It's not a very intuitive process, you have to browse the datastore, right click on the folder containing the VMs files, and select move.  From there, you'd think ESXi would be smart enough to figure it all out, but you'd be wrong.  I had to remove the VM from inventory, then add it back in from it's new location.  But that's not the end of the fun, both of the ones I moved got stuck at 35% when powering them back on.

So here's what happened because you may not see the problem right away.  When I clicked on the summary for the VM (Not the default tab when you go to the VM in the vSphere client), you'll see a bright yellow box asking if you moved the VM or if you copied it because it knows you've done one or the other.  I selected "I Moved It," and then the VM's finished starting up without any further delay.

Free CISSP Resources

Because I'm currently focusing on the CISSP exam, I'm going to create a new list in the spirit of my most popular post so far, the Free CCNA Resources 2.0 list.  Because I want to share it with the rest of the class in my Masters Degree Capstone course, I'm going to go ahead and post it now while it's still a little rough around the edges.  With that being said, I will not include anything that is only freely available to Eastern Michigan University students or government employees and contractors.

It's going to be a living document, more so than my other resource lists.  A lot of these are coming right from a couple CISSP study guides I am using on Books 24/7, and a lot of these are coming from my own time spent on Google.

Unwanted Phone Calls Really Upset People

Like most people, I get an occasional call from an unknown number on my cell phone.  Most of the time I ignore it, especially if they're calling while I'm at work.  But if I'm bored, I may Google the number later.  And it seems like every time that I do, it's a different group of 5 or 6 "who calls me from" databases that show up in the top hits on Google.  It appears that the call I got was from someone trying to sell extended car warranties this time, but what really caught my eye was some of the comments regarding this number.  Aside from the atrocious spelling and grammar, there's some real gems. Also enjoy the DMCA notice from the web sheriff.

My Fan Club

As I've mentioned a few times in the past, I act as an admin for one of the largest, if not the largest, Facebook groups dedicated to CCNA study.  You can find that group right here, or through the Facebook button in the top right corner of any page on this blog.  The group has a few other admins spread out through the world (so that our eyes would be on the page at different times of the day, ideally) and we run the group in accordance to our own moral compass, which for the most part aligns pretty well amongst ourselves and past admins.

Of course, the rules that we've set for the group don't sit well with some people.  If you're into something that doesn't jive with the rules, just simply don't discuss it in the group.  It's pretty simple, right?  Well for some it isn't that easy.  And since I encourage feedback from the community of users, I get it.  Here I've collected a few of my favorites.  There have been others, but many of them blocked me not long after and Facebook knocked it off of my messages before I could get a screenshot.  Warning, the language in these screenshots is a bit graphic.

This first satisfied customer of our services was removed for discussing braindumps and gets right to the point.

User number two was removed for the same reason.  Apparently cheating on exams means obtaining knowledge, and I'm just jealous somehow.   Interesting take.

User number three is my personal favorite.  I think he's asking me to create a group full of porn, and then show it to him?  I didn't realize that porn was so difficult to find.  I know that Netflix is taking over as the king of Internet traffic, but recent numbers show porn is still well over 30% of all traffic.

User number four was apparently upset that the free service we're providing him didn't get him an answer quickly enough for his satisfaction.  So he asked a few more times.  I believe this is the fourth time he asked, a couple times as a top level post, and a couple other times attempting to thread-jack another discussion.  Anyway, I did answer one of his other posts but he chose to ignore that and post again.  Needless to say, he won't have to worry about us getting back to him too slowly anymore.

Finally, this last one didn't come from the CCNA group, it came as a private message to the Free CCNA Workbook Facebook page, which I am also an admin for.  No commentary necessary, I think it speaks for itself.  Apparently when I took the screenshot of this one, I was feeling generous and omitted the name of this class act.  I wonder what he would have thought if I tracked down his instructor and showed them this?

And this is far from all of the nonsense I've gotten over the years, it's just the ones that amused me to the point of taking a screenshot.  That is not to say that it's all negative feedback, but that's primarily the thanks you get for a well maintained group.  The group has no spam, no flame wars, nothing violating the rules except for the very brief time it takes an admin to see and kill the post.  That is, except in my private inbox.  That's full of it.

Registering ASP.NET for Office Web Apps Error

Here's a quick and dirty post for something that came up recently in the lab.  I was setting up an Office Web Apps server, and was getting the following error:

Can't create new Office Web Apps farm: The server must be joined to a domain.

Seeing this error message was a bit frustrating to say the least, because the server was indeed joined to a domain.  After a bunch of searching with Google, I finally came across the answer.  While setting up the server, I had installed IIS before .NET, so I needed to register ASP.NET.  The required bits in IIS were already installed, so it was just a matter of registration. This can be done with the following steps:

• Open an elevated command prompt or PowerShell console.
• execute the command start Microsoft.NET
• navigate to c:\windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727
• execute the command asp_regiis.exe /i 
• execute the command iisreset or restart the server

Other things to check for when getting this error are to ensure that your server really is connected to a domain (and that the server account in AD is not broken) and that you have the correct DNS Server specified in the network settings.

SENSS Passed

Just a short post for this week, as I've done recently.  This exam has completely consumed my time lately.  Because I had yesterday off, I scheduled my second attempt at the SENSS and nailed it this time with a score of 910.  Exams are a lot easier when you know what you need to know, aren't they?  This isn't a knock against Cisco's exam topics, I just didn't have a good idea of just how deep I needed to know certain things that didn't seem like they'd be covered as heavily which lead me to spend a lot of time on things that weren't really covered very much.  It was my first failed Cisco exam, and quite a humbling experience. Either way now I have a much better idea idea of what I need to do moving forward in the CCNP Security.

Next up, I don't know yet.  I plan to take a couple days to recover from that experience and give some thought to which exam I want to tackle next.  While the SIMOS looks like it'll be a lot more fun as it's very heavy in cryptography and VPNs, the SISAS may be more practical as ISE reared it's head multiple times already in the SENSS, and I doubt it won't be in the other exams as well. Besides that, the SISAS is the only exam with a certification guide, so getting to see a little bit of structure in exam preparation may be of use.

Either way, it's not going to be the SITCS this time.  There's no way I'll be able to knock out v1.0 before December 16, and I'd prefer to wait a little bit and let the community hash out exactly what v1.5 is before attempting it.  There was a lot of butt-hurt early on for all 4 of these exams from the early attempts and I'd hate to join the ranks.

Also in the near future will be the CISSP, which is the capstone of my Masters Degree, and the Upgrading Your Skills to MCSA Windows Server 2016 exam.  I haven't decided when I'll mix those two in yet either.  So for now I'll just be kicking the tires on Server 2016 and starting to tinker with ISE.  I've got a few SENSS related posts still in very rough form, so I'll probably get those presentable and post them here and there as well.

CCNA Question of the Week 4

This week, we had an open ended question that covers a lot of areas.  This is a take on a question that was asked during the phone screening for my first I.T. job.  As with all questions in this series, do not make assumptions, and do not answer a question that was not asked. Just answer the question as completely as your knowledge allows.

Your computer was just started and you just logged in and then loaded your favorite web browser.  No other actions have been taken on this computer and no other programs have been launched.  You type www.yahoo.com into the URL bar of the browser and press Enter.  Between now and when the page finishes loading, describe everything that happens in order for that page to load.

The Official CCNA Group Rules

Group Rules:
1.This is a network for the network associate. All legitimate things CCNA related, as well as most other I.T. topics may be discussed here.
2.Things that may not be discussed here include (but is not limited to): Brain-dumps, any other form of copyright infringement, any illegal activity, spam, politics, and personal attacks. It doesn’t matter if it’s legal where you live, Facebook is an American website. If you like a post, that is considered the same as if you posted it yourself.
3.If certguard.com says it’s a dump, then it’s a dump and this isn’t open to negotiation.
4.Do not post homework questions with the expectation that the answers will just be provided. We are willing to help if you don’t understand something, but this group isn’t here to just do it for you.
5.The admins, and only the admins, will decide and enforce the rules.
6.Not knowing is no excuse. You shouldn’t be posting anywhere on the Internet if you don’t know the rules. Violators of any rule are subject to immediate banning.
7. No new accounts. No offense to anyone, it's just that accounts newer than 30 days are where the majority of spam comes from. If you get turned away for this, feel free to try again later.
8. No one word answers. If you can't explain why the answer is d, then you don't need to be the 15th person saying d. Contribute something meaningful to the conversation.
9. Don't try to add people to the group. Nobody gets in without an admin's approval, and I do not approve anyone who did not join on their own.

Group FAQ:
http://www.firewallninja.info/2016/07/the-official-ccna-group-faq.html