SANS Comp

In the advancement of my field of study i plan to enter the SANS cyber foundation competition.  This is a comp. for basic entry level security and cracking abilities.  This competition uses lots of networking and "back door" entry to gain access to the computer.  Duncan has also ordered me some books and i plan to read them and in addition to that use the competition to advance myself.  I have used the boot able CD of Ophcrack and tried to crack my own password but it did not locate it.