As part of a project recently I got the chance to play with a 36 core instance on AWS (c4.8xlarge) for some password cracking related activities. To get hashcat and john up and running with multi-core is a little fiddly (it’s not download and crack), so I thought I’d document the setup and show some benchmarks with hashcat and John the Ripper utilising 36 cores. In order to select the 36 core instance you’ll need to use a HVM (hardware virtual machine) enabled machine image. I used the Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS image.

Running Windows as a main OS can be tough times for many hard core Linux users, especially when you want some command line power. PowerShell at first glance looks alien to some, but under closer inspection it’s not a million miles away from what you can achieve in a Bash shell.

So, a friend of mine was talking about this thing called Octopress and how he was moving his blogspot content across to it. I toiled for a while thinking that it wasn’t something I needed to do right now, but in the end I gave in and spent an evening moving my own blog across (I only had 2 posts before this so I assumed it would be quick – and I was right). There are plenty of blogs describing the process of setting up an Octopress site using GitHub pages, so rather than regurgitate others material I’ll talk about the bits that I got stuck with. But first…

About De-ICE S1.100 (Level 1)

This machine is very good for those looking to get their teeth into learning some simple penetration testing techniques. It allows newcomers to have a play with some common tools that are used in many penetration tests. In this guide I will to go into some detail to help beginners understand these tools. My aim is to inform you of why a chosen tool was been picked for the task and how to use the tool at a basic level.

The Penetration Testing with BackTrack (PWB) course is one which covers a lot of topics and genres, will push you to your limits, and make you forget what sleep is. The remote lab covers multiple networks, each with machines varying in difficulty and types of vulnerabilities. I cannot go into too much detail due to the non-disclosure agreement students make with Offensive Security. The best insight as to what is covered in the course can be viewed here in the course syllabus (this is what got me initially interested in the course). Be aware that the lab book will go through a large selection of topics, but independent research will be required. Expect to be surprised in the labs.