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Cryptography Basics Terms

I've always had an interest in Cryptography so recently picked up the book "Cryptanalysis: a study of ciphers and their solutions". I figure this is a good place to keep my notes. Cipher: implies a method or system of secret writing. Cyphers used to to transform plain-text into into a cryptography. Cryptogram: Single enciphered message. Encipherment: The process of using a Cipher on plain text to convert to a cryptogram. Decipherment: The opposite process of encypherment, converting the cryptogram into plain text. Decrypt: The process of solving a cryptogram without the use or knowledge of the key. Cipher categories: 1. Concealment Cipher: The secret writing is hidden by a some kind of device. 2. Transposition Cipher: The true letters of the secret message are rearranged in a pattern (key) agreed upon by all parties. 3. Substitution Cipher: Original letters of the plain text are replaced with symbols and the symbols are arranged in the same order as the origina
started becoming more active on linkedin and been slacking off on my blog, lol. The DC trip was fantastic, being on a strict budget all we paid for was gas for travel, hotel and food. Since all the national monuments and most museums are free, it's great! We saw the Smithsonian zoo, capital, supreme court, botanical garden, Smithsonian native american museum, Smithsonian air and space museum, Lincoln, WWII and Washington monuments, and NASA Goddard space visitors center and NSA's cryptologic museum. All in less then 3 days.. Super busy! The most surprisingly best part was the cryptologic museum, even my wife was interested :). The most disappointing was sadly the Goddard space visitors center, I was thinking it would be more like the Smithsonian air and space but it was much smaller, I'd much rather have visited the real NASA Goddard building! Actually I tried but got turned around at the gate:). Still, all sites I highly recommend seeing especially the zoo and botanical ga

1st Vacation

I took my family on our first real vacation! We arrived today at Washington DC, we are staying at a Marriott Courtyard in Greenbelt, MD. It's not bad for the price. I hope to check out the NASA Goddard space flight center and the NSA's national cryptologic museum, but since I'm the only need in the family... Guess we'll see. We are only here for 2 nights and we have a lot of stuff in DC to check out first.

NetBios is finally dead

I'm sure everyone already knew this, but its new to me. Starting with Vista, NetBIOS is officially not recommended! It can be disabled in a Server 2008, windows vista/7 environment. It has been replaced with Link Local Multicast Name Resolution, which is compatible with IPv6, unlike NetBIOS. WINS is also thrown out the window, no pun intended. LLMNR does not use WINS. LLMNR only works on the current broadcast domain, like NetBIOS, but because LLMNR doesn't use WINS, there is no way to use it outside the broadcast domain, which is fine since you should be using DNS for that.

IPv6 Transition

4 different technologies exist to ease the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. Intra-Site Automatic Tunnel Addressing Protocol (ISATAP) : this tunneling protocol is meant for private networks to allow hosts on IPv4 networks to communicate with hosts on IPv6 networks. There must be an ISATAP router between the IPv4 and IPv6 networks, the hosts on the IPV4 network must have the ISATAP interface on their computers. Tunnel works by putting the ipv4 address inside the IPv6 address. 6to4 : Is a protocol intended to be used on the Internet to allow IPv6 clients to access IPv4 Internet resources. There needs to be a 6to4 host on the IPv6 intranet that has their IPv4 routers address embedded in its IPv6 address, a 6to4 router between the IPv6 intranet and the IPv4 Internet resource, there can also be a 6to4 relay to link the IPv4 Internet to the IPv6 Internet so the 6to4 host can also access the IPv6 Internet outside the ipv4 Internet.  6to4 users IP Protocol 41 encapsulation. Teredo : A tunnel

IPv6 Notes

So I started studying for the Server 2008 Network Infrastructure exam.  I got through IPv4 in the study guide, even though I need to keep practicing Variable Length Subnetting. I'll probably do a post on that too for my own reference. This is just some notes on IPv6 for future reference. IPv6 uses 128bit addresses, which totals 3.4 undecillion unique addresses. The address is comprised of 8 sets of 16bit words (called blocks) separated by colons (2001:0DB8:3FA9:0000:0000:0000:00D3:9C58). You can shorten the addresses by omitting the first 0s in each block (0DB8 is going the same as DB8).  Also 16bit words of :0000:, they can be shorten to :0: The final tip is for addresses with one or more consecutive blocks of :0000:, you can replace all the zeros and colons with just 2 colons (::).  This technique can only be used once per address, the other 2 can be used more multiple times. Because each address has a standard length of 128 bits, it's easy to figure out how many 0 words

Next Cert

So I've started studying for the Microsoft 70-642, Configuring Windows Server 2008 Network Infrastructure. it's a LOT tougher than any other cert I've ever taken so far. I originally was hoping to be ready to take the test in 30 to 45 days of studying, but to be honest I don't think I'll be ready. I know will pass it eventually.