Alex McCulley

Dev - TCM PJPT

Quick Note I played around with note taking a bit on this box so it may be appear to be more scattered. I went between various sections and updated older sections and things like that. I'm not sure I ultimately liked it but as a way looking back I'll keep

Academy - TCM PJPT

Reconnaissance nmap scan Starting Nmap 7.94SVN ( https://nmap.org ) at 2024-04-23 20:53 EDT Nmap scan report for 10.0.2.152 Host is up (0.00018s latency). Not shown: 997 closed tcp ports (conn-refused) PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION 21/tcp open ftp vsftpd 3.0.3 | ftp-anon: Anonymous

Blue - TCM PJPT

As part of TCM Security's PJPT certificaiton, I'm posting my personal notes on the machines I'm working through as part of the mid course capstone. Recon Ran following nmap scan: nmap -sC -sV -T4 -oA blue_nmap 10.10.10.40 Starting Nmap 7.94SVN ( https://nmap.org ) at 2024-04-09

Studying for PJPT

I've recently started studying for TCM Security's Practical Junior Penetration Tester certification. As part of buying the certification, TCM offers training in the form of a practical penetration testing course. I actually took the precursor course to this one when it was available on Udemy a few years back. It's

NixOS Backup Server

Continuing on my side obsession with NixOS, I decided it was time to make my backup strategy for my homelab (as well as pictures, documents, etc) more robust. Currently all my Proxmox VMs, workstations, and other data is being backed up to an premises TrueNAS box hosting an NFS share.

Network +

I managed to get my Network + last month with a score of 771 out of 900! As I've done for my Sec+, A+, and Linux+ I wanted to give an overview of how I studied and what my overall thoughts and experience was of studying for and taking the Network+

Catching Up

It's been a while since my last post on Nix and NixOs (which you can find here, if you're interested). A lot of changes have happened since then. I got my first job in Information Security as a SOC analyst which has deepened some of my skills and taught me

NixOS

GitHub repo for my NixOS config can be found here About a year ago I took a brief look at a Linux distribution called NixOS. NixOS falls under the category of immutable Linux distros meaning that the operating system is mounted as read-only allowing for more separation between the OS

Deploying Windows AD with Ansible [Part 2 - Domain Controller Deployment]

If you'd like to just see the github repo for this project, you can look here. Now that we've provisioned our Windows Server 2022 template (which you can read about here), it's time to get to writing some ansible playbooks! This first one will deal with deploying the Windows template

State of the Homelab 2023

I started my homelab back in June of 2021 with an old HP Proliant G6 that I fished out of a dumpster at my work. I didn't have a great router at the time so I connected it to a raspberry pi that I used as a bridge to the

Ansible Vaults

I figured it would be a good idea to post about Ansible Vaults before I dive into the deep end of using them with my AD deployment series. An Ansible vault allows for a user to keep passwords or keys safe in a file as opposed to the alternative of

Deploying Windows AD With Ansible [ Part 1 - Template Config]

Overview While my bread and butter is Linux Systems, I like to check in on the Windows side of things from time to time. As an aspiring cybersecurity professional, it's important to understand Windows considering it's large footprint in the corporate world. An important part of Windows on the server

Linux + Exam Review

I took my Linux + exam earlier this month and passed with a score of 785 ( passing score is 720). Overall I'm happy with that score although I wish I could've broken the 800 mark. Studying for this exam helped to refine my understanding of Linux system administration, which is my

Ghost Migration

As you can see I've changed my CMS to Ghost from WordPress. There were a couple of motivations for this, mostly curiosity, but I also was able to save some money and test out my backup/restore/migration skills as a sysadmin. This CMS looks like it's got a lot

I Took the CompTIA Security +

... And I passed with a score of 797! To be honest I was a little concerned about this exam. I wasn't as consistent with my studying as I was for the A+, which I took a year ago. However, I wasn't working in IT when I was studying for the

Security + Social Engineering and Secure Coding Concepts

Chugging along with my Security + studying, I’m a little under a month until the test day. To be honest I’ve slowed down a little, but I haven’t stopped. I took another practice exam and it was tougher than the last two that I took and I ended

Security + Update

My initial timeline for the Security + was to study in February and March and take it in early April, but as usual life has happened and I had to reschedule. March proved to be a busier month than I anticipated and between going out of town for a weekend, celebrating

Security + Network Security and Host Security

Studying for this Security + is interesting. A lot of these concepts I’ve been exposed to or heard of before, but I feel like this time they’re really sinking in. I’m a firm believer in repetition being the mother of all learning, and this is at least the

I Broke my Proxmox Install.

I’ve had to nuke and pave more than a couple of times over the past few years for various reasons. It’s something that every IT person has had to do (some more than others). Because of this, I’ve played around with a couple different backup strategies over

(H)Active Directory - Introduction and Configuration

One of my long term goals since starting my own homelab was to make my own active directory environment. Having a place to practice writing GPOs (Group Policy Objects), play around with pen testing techniques, and practicing day to day administrative tasks (and attempting to automate them) is an invaluable

Security + CIA and AAA

Just to keep myself accountable as far as my studying goes, I figured I’d make some posts of whatever topics I’m learning. My Security + journey started out in familiar territory. The first topic really discussed in the book is the CIA security triad. The CIA security triad is

Security + Pre-Test

I took my Security + pre-test in my Darril Gibson book a few days ago, and I got a 68% on it. While CompTIA doesn’t do strict percentages, I’d like to get a comfortable 80-90% in order to consider myself ready. The good news is that a lot of

Minecraft Server

I decided to do something a little different as a way to test out my personal workflow as far as standing up a server, installing proper software, and then monitoring the server for resource management all while having a little bit of fun. To be honest I don’t really

Security + Resources

I talked about what I like to do for studying in my CCNA post, but I’ll quickly summarize what I said in that post. I like to have a book, a video series, some practice exams/questions, and depending on the cert, some interactive labs. The good news on

Certification Pivot (Goodbye CCNA, Hello Security +)

At the start of this website, I was planning on taking my CCNA within the next year or so. There were a couple of good reasons for this. The first being that I felt it was one of my weaker points in the wider scope of the IT world. I