My expeeriance so far.
Since the start of taking the course SPO600 I have learned allot, and tried allot of new things, But to date I have been rather silent about it regarding the blogs, so I'm going to dedicate this post to some of the things that stuck out to me.
One of the first things we did is generate a public an private ssh key to use for the class servers, and prior to my first class I knew nothing about ssh keys. and I am surprised I did not know anything about them prior considering how commonly they are used.
An ssh key is basically a long randomly generated number used in a math formula to lither encrypt data or decrypt it.
ssh keys are normally generated in pairs, the public key is responsible for encrypting data, and only the corresponding private key can decrypt that data. so that means even if the public key gets into the hands of an attacker, as long as the private key is kept safe they cant decrypt the data without spending allot of time brute force calculating what the private key is.
Once we got all setup and connected to the servers I indirectly ended up being exposed to even more new software, at first I did-int have a Linux installation on hand so I used one of the schools servers, the initial processes was a little messy since I had to use windows to ssh into the school server and then ssh again to the target server using the ssh key. However another student pointed me towards Git and Git bash, I wont get to much into detail about what I learned while using git for the first time, but it allowed me very easy accesses to the Linux server directly through windows using the bash shell.
Although I do most of my work on windows operated machines I haven't been a total stranger to Linux/UNIX, Ive previously deployed applications for the systems and taken a class on it. But this is the first time I have been required to actually preform meaningful tasks on the system so at first I found myself just looking at the command line I knew how to navigate the file structure and preform basic tasks but I was not fully prepared to learn how to learn to do new things with it, at first. In all it the other operating systems Ive gotten used to so far, The learning processes is almost automatic for example in windows you can generally click around and start picking things up fairly fast. even IBS's System I prompting system made it easier to figure out command arguments once you knew the command name. Not to say the Linux system was difficult or even that it took long to start learning, but sheer amount of information that it will dump to your terminal is daunting at first, But once I was shown how to use some of the basic commands like wget and tar xvf extract I was surprised at how easy and simple the system actually was to operate. And I started to see how systems like windows and Linux compare to each other and I saw some weaknesses in windows I had not considered before. I suppose the saying "Ignorance is bliss" Applies here. For example, have you ever had one of those frustrating permission issues with windows where you just cant seem to get the system to do what you want it to due to some obscure setting or protection level, that never seems to happen on a Linux system if you have an administrator account on the system, you can do anything you like without any resistance from the system in contrast to windows this was quite nice, however on the flip side the risk of causing a serious mess in the system due to user error is quite high if you don't pay attention. There are many ups and downs to both systems but the main thing I found by learning yet another os is that each tool has its unique benefits and that its best to learn as many as you comfortably can.
Ive learned many of these things while working on labs 2-4 but the reason I am not blogging about those now is because its been quite some time since doing them and I feel I should take one more pass at them in order to give them meaningful posts, this time Ill blog as I do them.
One of the first things we did is generate a public an private ssh key to use for the class servers, and prior to my first class I knew nothing about ssh keys. and I am surprised I did not know anything about them prior considering how commonly they are used.
An ssh key is basically a long randomly generated number used in a math formula to lither encrypt data or decrypt it.
ssh keys are normally generated in pairs, the public key is responsible for encrypting data, and only the corresponding private key can decrypt that data. so that means even if the public key gets into the hands of an attacker, as long as the private key is kept safe they cant decrypt the data without spending allot of time brute force calculating what the private key is.
Once we got all setup and connected to the servers I indirectly ended up being exposed to even more new software, at first I did-int have a Linux installation on hand so I used one of the schools servers, the initial processes was a little messy since I had to use windows to ssh into the school server and then ssh again to the target server using the ssh key. However another student pointed me towards Git and Git bash, I wont get to much into detail about what I learned while using git for the first time, but it allowed me very easy accesses to the Linux server directly through windows using the bash shell.
Although I do most of my work on windows operated machines I haven't been a total stranger to Linux/UNIX, Ive previously deployed applications for the systems and taken a class on it. But this is the first time I have been required to actually preform meaningful tasks on the system so at first I found myself just looking at the command line I knew how to navigate the file structure and preform basic tasks but I was not fully prepared to learn how to learn to do new things with it, at first. In all it the other operating systems Ive gotten used to so far, The learning processes is almost automatic for example in windows you can generally click around and start picking things up fairly fast. even IBS's System I prompting system made it easier to figure out command arguments once you knew the command name. Not to say the Linux system was difficult or even that it took long to start learning, but sheer amount of information that it will dump to your terminal is daunting at first, But once I was shown how to use some of the basic commands like wget and tar xvf extract I was surprised at how easy and simple the system actually was to operate. And I started to see how systems like windows and Linux compare to each other and I saw some weaknesses in windows I had not considered before. I suppose the saying "Ignorance is bliss" Applies here. For example, have you ever had one of those frustrating permission issues with windows where you just cant seem to get the system to do what you want it to due to some obscure setting or protection level, that never seems to happen on a Linux system if you have an administrator account on the system, you can do anything you like without any resistance from the system in contrast to windows this was quite nice, however on the flip side the risk of causing a serious mess in the system due to user error is quite high if you don't pay attention. There are many ups and downs to both systems but the main thing I found by learning yet another os is that each tool has its unique benefits and that its best to learn as many as you comfortably can.
Ive learned many of these things while working on labs 2-4 but the reason I am not blogging about those now is because its been quite some time since doing them and I feel I should take one more pass at them in order to give them meaningful posts, this time Ill blog as I do them.
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