The Great Fall

Happy Easter everyone!

This will be a fairly short post due to the holiday, but I want to talk about today's subject: "backups," as this has directly affected me recently.

Now, this is a subject that most red & blue teamers will think, "Duh, that's standard procedure." But in reality, how many of us actually back up our personal items? How often are we making contingencies? Well, today let's talk about how I dealt with this situation.

Backstory:

As you may recall from my post, "Building Your Kit," I mentioned my main rig:

Saying it was 6 years old would be generous; it was probably closer to 7 years old. This became very clear last week when my rig started acting abnormally. I hadn't thought much of it at first, as I had troubleshooted many issues before. However, during testing, it became clear that this was a hardware issue.

Now, without going into too much detail, my main rig just stopped completely. It wouldn’t boot at all. At that point, I knew the rig’s time had come. I had anticipated this day would arrive and had proactively made a plan for it.

My main way of backing up my data was using "Deja Dup Backups."

This allowed me to save my personal data and my precious virtual machine to the local NAS I have set up. Along with this, I use Timeshift to back up my settings.

Outcome:

I had to get a new rig, and while it may not have been the one I really wanted, it was an upgrade. I’m glad I was able to find something that worked in a reasonable amount of time.

After about 24 hours, I was almost in the same situation I was in before my rig failed. I was really lucky, as I hadn’t truly tested whether these backups would go smoothly or if the VMs would work on the new rig, but everything went well.

Key takeaways:

• Importance of Backups: Do them!
• Preparation and Proactive Planning: Always plan for a worst-case scenario.
• Testing and Reliability of Backups: Occasionally, test the data you are backing up.
• The Value of a Quick Upgrade: Sometimes it's better to get back up and running than to wait weeks for the perfect solution.