Seperate machines ?

[poochlookers]

I am trying to get into the strict discipline of keeping my personal shit separate from my infosec shenanigans.

Do you guys keep separate machines, do you guys enforce a strict seperation ?....

I'm torn about keeping and doing personal stuff on a machine that I would use for infosec research. Perhaps it's stupid Hollywood movie bullshit, but I would like some honest advice on this matter.

A best practice sort of guidance.

[Kulverstukas]

Well if you're developing malware, then the only smart thing to do would be to keep it all separated I suppose keeping it all separated and offline is a good idea anyhow if you're into that kinda stuff, because there's been a lot of incidents where "seucrity analysts" got pwnd one way or another.

[Ultimate-hacker-Mayhem]

I always keep separate machines, some I use for work and other I use for testing programs and software, running created scripts ect.  I currently have 6 PC's and two laptops running various OS to resolve compatibility issues.  One PC is for my internet searches and general usage such as email and chat.  I never mix the two, and the others are offline.

[N00bHacker]

I just recently acquired my second laptop and I use that only for work related stuff. Better be safe than sorry in my opinion, plus it's good practice for the future when you might be forced to separate work and private matters.

[zenith]

I have separate machines, but it's more out of convenience than out of privacy or paranoia. My desktop is running Windows for gaming, and that's also where any of my personal stuff is stored. My laptop is running *nix, and anything infosec related (code snippets, bookmarks, half-written future tutorials for EZ that will never be published, etc.) is kept on that. So no, I wouldn't say I enforce a strict separation, but I find it keeps things a lot neater to have a dedicated machine.

If you're concerned privacy-wise, I'd advise reading lucid's anonymity tutorial, as it will give you some guidance in VM usage, bootable USBs, clearing your machine's logs, etc.