December's Meeting

December 19th was another great IT Club meeting. We had a special presentation by Ron Woerner. Mr. Woerner is an IT Security Risk Manager and President of InfraGard's Omaha chapter.

We discussed many aspects of information security. One of the first and perhaps most important things Mr. Woerner mentioned was the concept of ethical hacking. There are plenty of ways to hack without damaging things or breaking the law.

Mr. Woerner then went on to discuss the five phases of attack, internet hacking, tools, resources, and recommended reading.

He also mentioned a wish to return in 2010 to discuss interviewing for an IT job. Keep watching for more ways to glean some more helpful information from a local IT professional.

Also, you may have noticed a trend of free food and prizes just for attending. This month was no exception. Another 16GB flash drive was won by Felix Becerra. So make sure you're there in January.

SIDENOTE: Don't forget about the LAN party on January 9th from 6-9:30PM in lab 3. If you had perfect attendance so far this quarter you will be eligible to win a netbook!

Election of New Officers

If you are a regular member of the club, you are aware that February 27th we are going to hold an election for new club officers.  Tony (our Secretary) and I are going to be starting our 8th quarter in March and would like to hand over the duties of the club to some fresh faces.  We will be talking about the election in the next meeting, January 23rd.  Bear will discuss his criteria for those positions.  If you are interested in becoming a club officer, please join us for the January meeting.  The positions that will be vacant are President, Secretary, and possibly Vice President.  There may be a Treasurer position at some time also.  See you there!!

EMERGENCY!!!!!!!!!!!!

You all know Bear.  His niece's apartment building burned to the ground today and she lost EVERYTHING.  She has a 22 month old son named David.  This is an especially hard time of the year for a tragedy of this magnitude.  I am hoping that we as a group can come together and help out Bear's family.  Anything will help.  If there is anything you can do to help, please contact me or Bear. 

Ken Duncan - (402)213-1590
Bear (402)301-4834

December Meeting Challenge

Just a reminder, we meet on the 3rd Saturday again this month, December 19th at 12:30pm.

We have a guest speaker for this meeting.  His name is Ron Woerner.  He is the Manager of Security Risk Management at TDAmeritrade and President of Nebraska InfraGard.  He spoke about a year ago at the club and is very knowledgeable in his field.  If you have missed meetings in the past, I would recommend not missing this one.  Ron will have a ton of great information to pass along.

Also for this meeting, I offer you a challenge.  As you know, the club meeting will be changing the time we meet from 1pm to 12:30pm.  Therefore, the slide that is shown on the tv's in the hall way needs to be updated.  I made that slide about a year ago and we are ready for a new one.  We are going to have a contest for those who are interested in creating a new slide.  This slide needs to be ready for presentation to the club on December 19th.  The club will decide which slide best represents our club.  The winning slide will be added to the rotation and displayed on the big screens in the hallways.  Also, the winner will win a prize to be determined by the day of the meeting.  When I made the slide last year, no other club had a slide.  Now the CJ Club and the Web Design Club have slides.  I think they are trying to show us up.  Their slides have movement and all kinds of cool stuff.  Maybe our new slide could have something like that. If this sounds like something you are interested in, please send me an email letting me know that you are making a slide and be ready to show it off at the next meeting.

Specifics for the slide:
Name:  AITP Omaha Student Chapter
Time:  4th Saturday of the month @ 12:30pm
Location:  Lab 3
Format: PowerPoint

Thank you all and I look forward to a great turnout at the next meeting.

November's Meeting Recap

If you missed November's meeting of the IT Professionals Group at ITT Tech, you missed some important security information. Mr. Johnson demonstrated a very simple bootable program called Ophcrack. Ophcrack is a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables. This little open source program was able to crack the complex password #Dell2009# in only 12 minutes. We had underestimated the program it seems when we decided to leave it running while we went out for pizza (provided once again by the school). We all suspected it would upwards of 30 minutes to complete and were rather nervous about the security of our passwords after that.

Continuing the tradition of fabulous door prizes, Dave Cannon won a 16GB flash drive. What might you win next time?

Pizza, prizes, and knowledge...what more could you ask for? We look forward to seeing you for the next meeting on December 19th!