Blog

Palo Alto Ansible Network Automation: Automating IP address validation

12/02/2024 by Andrew Roderos Leave a Comment

In my previous post, I shared a tutorial on writing an Ansible playbook to check for available and unavailable VSYS names on a Palo Alto Networks firewall. Today, we'll explore an Ansible playbook designed to verify the availability of user-defined IP address with prefix length on a Palo Alto Networks firewall. The Ansible playbook The playbook checks if the user-inputted IP address with prefix length is valid and within the range of RFC 1918. Moreover, it checks if the IP address …

Palo Alto Ansible Network Automation: Automating VSYS name management

08/12/2024 by Andrew Roderos Leave a Comment

My Ansible network automation journey began two years ago, but it's been an off-and-on process due to changing priorities at work. Initially, I created a proof-of-concept Ansible playbook to configure a site-to-site VPN on a Cisco router using a network configuration template. In this blog post, I will share my experience of converting a Palo Alto network configuration template into an Ansible playbook. Managing expectations Although I am not an expert in Ansible or network automation, I …

How to solve my PCAP CTF challenges

10/30/2023 by Andrew Roderos Leave a Comment

For the past three years, I have been a volunteer for our Cybersecurity Festival event during Cybersecurity Awareness Month. In my first year, I volunteered to create a few purposely-built vulnerable machines for the Red versus Blue team event. Last year, I volunteered for two events. The first was the Capture The Flag (CTF), and the second was the Offense for Defense event. This year, our Information Security Office team asked me to come back to be part of a talented team to create …

Creating a CTF challenge

07/05/2023 by Andrew Roderos Leave a Comment

Our Information Security Office has hosted a Cybersecurity Festival event yearly during Cybersecurity Awareness Month for several years. In 2020, I participated in a CTF event, which I covered here. In 2021, I was part of a team that created an infrastructure for the Red Team versus Blue Team event, which I mentioned here. Last year, I participated in creating a CTF challenge for the event. I also helped a colleague with the Offense for Defense event. To some extent, creating a CTF …

Working with PCAPs

06/01/2023 by Andrew Roderos Leave a Comment

As a network or security professional, working with PCAPs comes with the territory. Some CTFs also include PCAP challenges, and while Wireshark is the software of choice for some people, learning other tools can help get the flag quickly. In this post, I will cover command-line utilities one can use when working with PCAPs. Misspelled user agent In one of the CTFs I participated in, the task was to find misspelled user agent string. You can do this with Wireshark, but Tshark and Linux …

[Read more...] about Working with PCAPs