Dealing with being underpaid in InfoSec

I was part of a twitter conversation today with @BurbSecWest @jjarmoc @HackerHuntress which this tweet sums up.  It was all about how to deal with the situation where you are underpaid and new jobs are offering you less than you are worth because they are simply offering you a percentage more than what you are currently making, which is far less than where you should be.  Now in that conversation I said the better option is to simply not let yourself be that underpaid in the first place.  That is still the best advice.  But let's say it is too late for that.  There is my advice:

First, figure out why you are being underpaid.  Is it because you changed locations and didn't know the market, are you able to do a job more senior than the one you current have, etc?  If it is something like that then once you get the offer, explain that.  Explain how this job isn't a side step and you are underemployed, or whatever the case may be.  Most of the times making an offer to a percentage of the candidates current salary is only a strict rule if it is a lateral move.  If you can make the case that it isn't for whatever reason, then that rule should relax and you should be able to get yourself more money.  Now wait until you have an offer though, or you may be talking yourself out of a job by making your current job sound less than what it really is.

Now if you have no good reason and you simply let the market pass you by while you weren't looking, it isn't as easy.  The first step is to tell your boss what you now know.  Even if they won't get you to where you want to be every bit helps, and until you leave it is still money.  Even if you get a small raise this way you should still move on.  Either your boss isn't aware enough to know you are underpaid, or is aware and is fine with it.  I don't care which it is, you deserve a better boss.  Now when you get an offer, be honest.  Tell them you know you are being underpaid and this offer while more money is still less than you are worth.  See what they say.  If they say that is the policy and they can't give you too much more than you already make then ask if they will work to help get you to where you should be over the next two years or so.  If you think about it, it really isn't a good idea for a company to underpay their employees, it just causes turnover.  Managers really get together and call out who is underpaid and they give them bigger raises than normal to get them up to where they should be so they won't leave.  Your best hope is to find a company that will do that.  You won't get any of that in writing and the HR person won't like talking about that at all, talk to the hiring manager about it.  If you can't get that, then you will have to hop two or three jobs to get where you should be.  But once you are there be picky and find a good place and stay there for a long time.  No one likes hiring someone who switches jobs every year.  And try not to let yourself fall so far behind again.

Good luck, and feel free to keep the conversation going.

USB GPS on Kali Linux

Quick technical post here.  I'm digging Kali Linux but some things that just worked on BackTrack take extra effort to get working on Kali.  This is one of them.  My USB GPS device just always worked on BackTrack, and didn't on Kali.  So I dug into it and got it working, and thought I would share what I found.

First you need to install the packages:
apt-get install gpsd gpsd-clients

Then plug in your GPS if it isn't already and test that it is working and you know what device it is:

gpsd -D 5 -N -n /dev/ttyUSB0

You should see GPS stuff scroll on the screen.  You may have to break out of it and try a second time to see it.  If ttyUSB0 isn't correct for you, figure out which one works, you need to know.  

Then configure gpsd to auto detect the device with this command:

dpkg-reconfigure -plow gpsd

Answer the questions, this where why you tested it and made sure you know the correct device.

Finally for it to start working properly for me I had to reboot and then plug the GPS in, but that may just be because I'm running it in a VM or just unlucky.  So at this point if it is working, great.  If not, reboot with the device unplugged and then plug it in after you login and it should start working fine.

chromium_fix.sh added to Kali-Scripts

As the title says, I added a script called chromium_fix.sh to https://github.com/secjohn/kali-scripts.  Chrome won't run as root unless you point it to a different home directory.  Which is annoying on Kali since you run as root.  That change gets blown away every time the package is updated, which is more annoying.  So enter this script.  It will setup chromium to run as root.  Use it every time the package is updated.  I decided to use the Debian package using apt-get install chromium instead of downloading the Chrome deb from Google and installing it, which is what I did for BlackTrack.  So far it is updated far less often so this annoying feature isn't as bad.  If a few people ask for it I'll make a chrome_fix.sh script as well, it is an easy change.  Enjoy.

Kali Linux and Update script

If you are one of the few people who read this, you may know I have a BackTrack Linux update script here: https://github.com/secjohn/backtrack-shell-scripts.  Well Kali Linux is the new version of BackTrack now and with it there are some new and exciting changes.

Gone are the days where you have to do so many steps to keep things updated.  Unlike BackTrack, the Kali packages are going to be kept very current, weekly, or even daily if you go with the bleeding edge option.  So most of the steps I took in my BackTrack update script are no longer needed.  Also, they won't work in Kali anyway.  Most of the tools don't have the git or svn info in the directories so updating them that way doesn't work in Kali.  Given then I have made a new repo:  https://github.com/secjohn/kali-scripts

It is a much shorter and simpler script.  It updates the packages on the system, then manually updates Metasploit, Nessus if you have it, puts an SVN version of Fuzzdb in the /user/share/fuzzdb dir and compiles the SVN version of nmap in /opt/nmap-svn.

Those last two items may not be needed, time will tell.  Fuzzdb is already on there and I don't know how often it gets updated anymore.  The version of nmap on Kali is really close to the SNV version and when I compared the script directories the SVN one only had a few extra scripts in it.  So that may not be needed anymore either and I don't overwrite the packaged nmap.  If you want to use the SNV nmap call it directly, or just use the scripts in the directory with the installed nmap.

Time will tell how this goes or what other scripts I add.  Feedback and additions and ideas are always welcome.

If you haven't switched over to Kali yet, you should.  Seriously, it is nice.

BackTrack Linux Update Script

I use BackTrack Linux a lot.  All the time really.  And in-between engagements I like to update the tools I use.  The normal apt-get update doesn't really update many of the tools I use.  And I like to automate things.  So I created a simple shell script to do this.  I updated it recently and I already have some more tools in mind to update it again.  But what I would really like is comments and even code from others who do the same thing to help make it better and more useful for even more people.  I find it interesting what other people see as important enough to update.

I used shell on purpose, to keep it simple and accessible to anyone.   A shell script is just running the commands you would normally run on the command line.  If you can't handle that then maybe BackTrack isn't what you should be running.  I kept the script as simple as possible and over did the comments again to keep it accessible and allow for easy re-use of code for people who don't do a lot of shell scripting.

You can find my update script here:  https://github.com/secjohn/backtrack-shell-scripts

I would love your commits here, or if you are a github type person make a branch and give me a pull request and get your code in the script.  Just don't break anything.

My DerbyCon Talk

First let me say how great DerbyCon was, the content, the people, the staff, everything about it was ideal.  Second let me thank the people who ran it for selecting my talk.  I was surprised and very excited that I got to speak.

My talk was in the small room and against some stiff competition at the 4PM Sat slot and several Chicago land people I know went to Ben0xA's talk instead, which I totally understand.  His talk rocked.  But the room was almost totally full anyway and I think only one person walked out on me which is rather good for a Con, so it worked out fine I think.

I was pretty nervous in the beginning and talking a bit faster than I needed to, something I even say at some point.  I was afraid I would run out of time.  Once I noticed how fast I was going I loosened up a bit and remembered to tell the audience to ask questions which I meant to do in the beginning but forgot.  So they did, and their questions were great!  Several questions reminded me to talk about something that I planed to talk about but forgot like how to say no to people who you have to make sure keep liking you if you want to keep your job.  Seriously the questions improved the talk and I love how smart everyone is at Cons like this.

At the end I got a lot of positive feedback and people wanting to continue the conversation which we did at the hotel bar and it was great.  For my first talk at a large Con I'm putting this down as a success.

I posted the slides at the securityhangout forum http://forum.securityhangout.org/index.php, the direct link to the post is http://forum.securityhangout.org/index.php.

The video can be seen here: http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/derbycon2/4-2-7-john-woods-so-you-got-yourself-an-infosec-manager-job-now-what

All the video's are here: http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/derbycon2/mainlist, I recommend checking out tons of them.

Let me know what you think of the talk and slides.  I'm always looking to learn and to improve.

DerbyCon 2.0

I must say, DerbyCon was great this year.  I missed it last year and had high expectations going into it based on what I heard and it was even better than I expected!

First off, checking in took about 30 seconds, seriously.  Also I could always get into any talk I wanted to get in and even find a seat.  The hotel seemed to like us and people hung out and drank and talked in the lobby all night and it was a ton of fun and very relaxed.

BurbonCon was great, it was like ChiSec, BurbSec, and BurbSec-West all came together in one place.  Really the only bad thing was I couldn't see everything I wanted to and the stable talks weren't recorded.  I wish I knew they weren't being recorded earlier on I would have gone to more of those, there were some really good ones I missed.

This was also my first time speaking at what I would consider a major conference.  I'll blog about my talk separate and not bore you about the content here.  But I think it went pretty well.  The audience got into it after about 10 minutes when I finally loosened up, I was pretty nervous in the beginning.  I got a lot of great questions that moved the talk along and proved how smart everyone in the audience was.  And I got some great feedback afterwords which made me feel pretty good.  Ryan Reynolds came up to me and told me how much he liked it and he gave one of my favorite talks this year at DEF CON, that really made my day.

All in all it was great.  Now I'm hitting http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/derbycon2/mainlist to watch some talks I missed.  Starting with Ben0xA's talk which was at the same time as mine, I heard it was good and really funny.