Penetration Testing: Re: TCP/IP skills

[drbitbucket () comcast net]

-----Original Message-----
From: captgoodnight () acsalaska net [mailto:captgoodnight () acsalaska net]

> This kinda pushes me in the direction of thought that since linux guruship is 
> so deep into the kernel/coding realm, that it's simply natural for my penguin 
> friends to dive into the deep. Where perhaps since MS for the most part is so 
> "USER/GUI" minded, that it's kinda a challenge to find the motivation or 
> desire if you will, to really dig into what our fingertips can touch. I swear I'm 
I hope I'm not going to fan any flames here, but I'll share with you a conversation I had a few months ago with a CEO 
who has been working with computers since the late 60s.  One of the reasons he call me was because my background was 
heavily UNIX and he said that in his observation, those who operate on the UNIX platforms have a better understand of 
what goes on under the hood than their Windows counterparts.  Obviously, this is stereotypical and does not apply to 
everyone who works on Windows.  But I understood his point.  This doesn't negate someone's ability to learn that 
information, but working in a GUI environment makes you work harder and have to go out of your way to find it out.  
Whereas under UNIX (often noted as expert-friendly :), you have to dig in deep to find out how, sometimes, to do the 
most basic of things.  You take your good with your bad, but in the end, I suppose it is the trial by fire that builds 
that greater understanding.

> witness. To sum it up from my perspective, *nix is for the scientist, MS,APPLE > is for the USER. Please know, I do 
> know a few MS gurus that know a hell of 
I'll beg to differ on Apple's OS X platform.  Being a UNIX nut, I *prefer* to operate on OS X because I can balance my 
needs to interface with GUI apps with my needs to conduct my UNIX business.  The funny thing is that when budget time 
came around at my last job, I was one of four technical UNIX guys getting Titaniums, most of which were our desktops.  
Of course, I'm not saying that OS X is the end all that is all, but it's moving in the right direction.

Jon Repaci, GCIA, CISSP