Folding@home 100k Points

nospam@example.com (Junaid Loonat) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:27:00 +0200

Having recently updated / replaced my home network with new hardware, I felt it would be best to donate the 'extra' power to something useful. The led to a renewed interest in my old Packet-Brokers folding@home team, which I created after getting tired of continously changing folding teams (and thus losing my folding history). I installed the FAH client onto most of my boxen - all being pretty much average systems.

After a few weeks of 24/7 processing, I have finally reached the 100k points milestone on a previously unused profile (which only had about 23 work units).

Boxen used for folding are as follows:

3x Intel Celeron E3200 (with 4GB RAM)
1x AMD Sempron 140 (with 2GB RAM)
1x Intel Centrino 1.6GHz (with 2GB RAM)
(Occasionally) 1x Intel Core2Duo T9600 (with 4GB RAM)

At present, I don't do any GPU folding. Although I am considering making the investment into some good GPU hardware, my purchase would only be for GPU programming and not folding.

The Leap to SensePost

nospam@example.com (Junaid Loonat) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:48:00 +0200

Almost a few months into my new position as a senior analyst for SensePost, and things are great. Moving from a corporate back to a smaller company gave me sensations of dejavu. This is almost certainly due to my previous experience of not only moving from a small company to a corporate, but relocating to another (busier) region of the country.

It's surprizing how different pentesting on a per-project basis is, when compared to pentesting as a dedicated resource to a global security team within a corporate. Although you are dedicated to a single project at any time, projects run for only a few days. This change is refreshing nonetheless.

It's not surprizing however that no matter what policies and procedures govern your position / role, job satisfaction depends almost entirely on the people surrounding you. Having said this, I feel extremely fortunate in that each time I left a great bunch of guys at my old job, I was met by another great bunch of guys at the new one. The SensePost gang accepted me with open arms even though I rebeled against the iFans, and stood proudly by my Gentoo ways. Additionally, the guys do their best to help me unleash my foosball and pool skillz.

In all, my only regret is that I did not join SensePose earlier as upon my entrance, I discovered that one of the IT security greats, Haroon Meer, would soon be departing in order to persue his own goals. After almost a decade at SensePost, it is understandable that Haroon would need change in order to explore other opportunities. Like the rest of the SensePost team, I wish him all the best with his new venture Thinkst. Haroon's farewell (to SensePost) post can be found here.

In my new position, I will continue to deliver ownage in order to lead the vulnerable to a MORE than adequate level of security.

Signing off for the 1st new blog post,
-- The ZA Packet-Broker

Thoughts of a Cyber-LOONATic - Life

Folding@home 100k Points

The Leap to SensePost