After spending fifteen hours in my truck (thank goodness for McDonald’s iced coffees), I made it back home from Atlanta safe and sound. I spent most of the weekend lounging around and resting, and am back at work today.

Last week’s class was eye opening, to say the least. WebInspect is a program that scans websites for vulnerabilities. Throughout the week I ran several scans (some even against my own website), finding lots of interesting things and learning a lot. After seeing some of the most common web vulnerabilities, our final project was to “break into a website” using any knowledge, programs or tools we had at our disposal except for WebInspect. Our teacher informed us that he has been doing this lab for several years and only three people have ever successfully hacked his website. Well, now the number is four; after about an hour I was able to get in. I found a completely different vulnerability than what was intended, and the teacher said that I was the only person who had ever got this particular one to work.

Last week I also got to meet up with a few friends, including my friend Curlen (from the FAA) and Jay (owner of J2Games.com). I had a good time with each of them; Curlen, his girlfriend Katie and I ate at P.F. Chang’s, while Jay and I had dinner at the Macaroni Grill. I have been using the Internet for fourteen years now, so between people I’ve met online and people I’ve met through the FAA, it seems like I know someone in every major city.