Professional Networking on a Personal Budget

Presented at BSidesDC 2019, Oct. 26, 2019, 8:30 a.m. (510 minutes)

The Ethernet kind of networking; no talking to your neighbors required! (But we're all hackers here, so you should at least *think* about making a friend or two!) Infosec professionals unanimously agree that network security is a must to protect organizational assets. That's nice and all, but what about **your** assets? Many consumer-grade routing appliances provide a limited set of functions to secure the resources behind them, but enterprise-grade networking hardware comes with an enterprise-grade price tag. What's a hacker to do? Enter: the aptly-named "pro-sumer"-grade hardware. While there are multiple hardware devices that fit this label, this training course will focus on the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X; neither of your trainers are paid, sponsored or affiliated with Ubiquiti in any way, we just *really* like its balance between features and cost. In this course, we'll go over all of the features of the EdgeRouter X and how those features can be used to protect the devices on your home network. Ubiquiti has pretty good documentation, but knowing the "why" and "when", along with the "how", is critical for ANY new hardware or software deployment in order for the end user to take full advantage of the product. The full set of topics we'll cover can be found below: 1. Connecting to the configuration interface 2. Basic Setup Hygiene 3. Traffic Analysis 4. Routing 5. Firewall 6. NAT 7. Port Forwarding 8. DNS 9. VPN 10. Packet Capture 11. The Configuration Tree 12. Mastering the Balancing Act Between Features & Performance 13. CLI Overview We encourage anyone who's interested to join us, but those who are looking to enhance their home network security posture on a budget without jumping into the world of DD-WRT will find this training particularly useful.

Presenters:

  • Arden Meyer
    Arden Meyer began his journey into IT in 1982 when he first learned to program computers, then quickly moved on to hacking BBS, PBX, and ICS systems. He joined the USAF in 1996 and for 15 years traveled the world doing various mysterious things with electrons. Arden was hand selected in the initial cadre of the Network Warfare Operations career field and tasked to develop the first Cyber Functional Training Unit where over the next three years he taught thousands of students everything from vulnerabilities in LMR/ICS/SS7 to basic computer programming to advanced exploitation & covert exfiltration. He finished his military career helping monitor & defend USAF networks at the AFCERT. After retiring from military service Arden ran the security operations team for a national financial services company until deciding to return to university to get his PhD. In his limited spare time, he also manages to lead his local chapter of The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers (TOOOL) and mentor local youth interested in anything IT related.
  • John York - Security Engineer at Aureon
    John York (@cynetise) began his networking career in 2001, where he installed and supported SONET/DWDM Transport equipment across various metropolitan cities throughout the U.S. He continued working in the telecommunications field, including serving on emergency response teams to sustain the telecom infrastructure during disasters, until he transitioned his career into the IT & IS field in 2005 as the founder and former CEO of a managed service provider in Des Moines, IA. Today John continues to work amongst the wrath of network/blue team defenders as a Network Security Engineer for Aureon. He is passionate in the infosec community as a member of the local InfraGard, ISSA Chapter, and other IT security and information sharing communities. Outside of working on architecting security solutions, John spends what little spare time he has with family and friends in the outdoors, primarily on the water, chasing down his next fishing story.

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