Benjamin Clark

I've been working a lot these past few weeks.

I've installed Gentoo Linux (my preferred distro) on one of our spare Dell PowerEdge 750 servers. I'm running a hardened kernel with PAX (ASLR+PIE) and grsecurity -- unbelievably paranoid security protection, especially since I'm only running one public service (ssh) and I'm behind a dedicated firewall. Basically, if anyone manages to hack into my server, which I've tried to make hard enough in the first place, they still wouldn't be able to do much. The best part about grsec is that because it is kernel-based, a hacker would have to somehow interject arbitrary code into active memory -- which, of course, ASLR completely disallows.

The server does actually serve a larger purpose, but I like to think of it as my playground. I had to do a lot of quick learning on grsec and running a hardened user environment, but now I'm pretty confident. I'm just adding to my arsenal, friends.

I'll be working on some real exciting web projects in the coming months. I managed to find a way to apply my research interests in blogging and online communities, albeit in a round-about way. I'll be sure to keep my reader(s) aware and plugged in to the awesomeness.

My non-work life is going well, too. I'm doing my best to settle in here in Tallahassee. At the beginning of the month, there was the chance I'd be leaving to stay with friends in D.C., but since I've decided to keep plugging away at this job and build up my resume more, I decided to finally start unpacking. (You know, from when I moved in last June.)