February 26, 2020

What is Updog?

Friends among my various hacker spaces have shared links to a new tool called Updog created by Sc0tfree. A python3 implementation of an HTTP server that is intended to replace Python2’s SimpleHTTPServer module. I had to test it out myself and these are my opinions. In many hacker training courses, it is vital to be able to host your tools on a web server to download them onto target machines. One example would be to download a network scanning tool once you’ve gained a shell on the first machine of a target network.

January 13, 2020

Picat's Podcast: Episode 6

In this hour long podcast episode, I reviewed a lot of what I have done and what my current projects are. For this year, my goals are to get the OSCP and find a position at Offensive Security that is in the information security realm instead of development. Apart from studying, I’m also trying to help the Kali team with getting official cloud versions available on AWS and Azure with each new Kali release.

January 4, 2020

2019 in review

Another year, maybe decade, has come and gone and it’s time for me to review 2019. I realize I have not blogged consistently and that’s due to a couple different reasons. Work is busy, I burned out while studying, and there are some personal changes in my life. All that said, not much has changed my priorities. I still want to learn to be a better hacker and to give back to the community that gave me so much.

June 27, 2019

Getting started in Infosec

On Wednesday April 10th, Misec Lasning held a panel to discuss getting into infosec. Four members of the infosec community shared their stories and advice. I was honored to be on the panel with three others; Kyle Andrus, Melissa Terwilliger, and Brian Martinez. Check out the recorded presentation below to see everyone’s answers! Transitioning from other disciplines to infosec, how should it be done? There is no wrong way to get into infosec.

April 13, 2019

CMU SEI releases tools to build realistic labs

In order to learn something, you need to practice it. When it comes to becoming a hacker, that is done by attacking machines in a lab. There are many ways of doing this, such as building your own, spinning up an OWASP or Metasploitable virtual machine, or using a service like Hack The Box. There’s one common flaw with these labs though, they’re not realistic. To build realistic labs that look like live environments is a hard task to accomplish.

March 16, 2019

Replacing a forgotten WordPress password

What is the best part of creating a new blog? You create everything, move content, and then get back to the daily grind. Come back to write the next post and, wait, what did I set as the WordPress password? Looks like we’re going to have to overwrite the hash in the database. <pre class="wp-block-code">``` mysql> SELECT ID, user_login, user_pass FROM wp_users; +----+------------+------------------------------------+ | ID | user_login | user_pass | +----+------------+------------------------------------+ | 1 | admin | $P$BThiRip7s2lXh/PBVW7yFnKbQWvDtc0 | +----+------------+------------------------------------+ Here’s the problem though, we need to know how WordPress hash passwords in version 5.

March 11, 2019

The power of scripting

On March 9th, I was a part of an awesome class hosted by @Ashioni that went over the Bandit challenges from OverTheWire.org. While I’ve attempted the Bandit challenges a few years ago, there are new additions and it’s always good to review how to answer these puzzles. There is never a single solution! In this article, I want to show a few ways we attempted the last challenge of the day.

December 31, 2018

2018 in review

This year seemed to fly by, but looking back a lot has happened. This is a summary of what I did in 2018. Tackling the OSCP If there’s one thing I’m going to struggle with recording on the internet… it’s that I’ve struggled with the OSCP exam three times. With each attempt I have gotten better and better, but I still need to try harder. Looking back, there’s more I need to do in the PWK course.

December 16, 2018

My experience with RuCTFe 2018

This year was my fourth attempt at the RuCTFe competition. I was leading the #misec team this year along with some smart and talented people. For those who are unaware. The RuCTFe is a Russian capture the flag event, held online and open to everyone around the world. This year’s event was in November and it was my first time leading the team. The CTF is an active “red vs blue” game, where each team is given a server of vulnerable applications.

May 13, 2018

Round 3 at Converge

Converge 2018 and Bsides Detroit was May 10-12. 3 days of infosec talks, workshops and challenges. I volunteered this year and had an amazing time (as I usually do at conferences). In case you missed out on the fun or are looking to catch up, check out Irongeek’s website for the recorded talks. Converge is a smaller conference if you’re used to hearing about Conferences like Shmoocon, DerbyCon, and Defcon. However we still manage to fill three days with awesome content.