No sooner than I sat down at my little workstation, he would call me with a list of things I needed to do. One of the most frustrating mysteries of my job was that my supervisor seemed to be psychic. My supervisor was located in a building halfway across campus (a good 10 minute walk) and my nearest student co-worker was at least 2 or 3 buildings away. As the case with many of student workers, our work space was usually some closet, or cubical where they could stash us which had 3 things, a 10bT ethernet jack, a phone line run to it, and power. In my life prior to becoming an InfoSec professional, I was a student worker who functioned as Unix systems administrator over a small lab of Solaris workstations. To that end, let me share a bit of a story (and personal history). It is my hope that you as our reader will learn from the mistakes of our collective past so that as an industry we don't have to repeat things (as often at least). As the old adage states, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. For those new to information security, it is our hope that you learn more about the various ports and services which are commonly used on networks.
For the die hard security professionals, this month is nothing more than a review of things you have learned over the past 10-20 years. As most of our regular readers are aware, this is Cyber Security Awareness Month and the ISC handlers are writing diary entries about securing various ports and services.