Bad Characters

About six months ago I discovered a few GREAT wordlists that have drastically increased my password cracking ability. See my post here. I have taken this new password cracking ability and maximized 10x with hashcat rules. Hashcat rules change the words in a wordlist to fit common password conventions such

This month on an internal penetration test I obtained domain administrator privileges in under 10 minutes with the help of a simple tool called LDAP Domain Dump. [https://github.com/dirkjanm/ldapdomaindump] On every internal penetration test, the first thing I do after collecting credentials is run the tool LDAP

Individual(s) exploited a flaw in the Beanstalk smart contract to move $80 Million worth of Beanstalk to a wallet of their choosing * The individuals leveraged the Aave lending system [https://www.kraken.com/en-us/learn/what-is-aave-lend] to initiate a flash loan that provided them a 67% voting stake in

I recently conducted a penetration test for an AWS environment and learned a few new tricks for cloud penetration testing.  AWS resources such as S3 buckets often inadvertently expose sensitive information so the external enumeration phase is very important. The scope of the assessment included a few S3 Buckets, database

A few things that distracted me this week: The degree of cooperation between the Conti ransomware group and Russian government entities is becoming clearer: Leaked Chats Show Russian Ransomware Gang Discussing Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Chat logs reveal that members of the Conti ransomware gang repeated Putin’s lies

Check out a few stories that distracted me this week: * The Conti ransomware group's chats were leaked this week along with their decryption keys for their malware. The chat messages look quite similar to a regular office IM with Conti members discussing FTO and salary details. [https://www.

A few things that distracted me from my job this week (penetration test reporting $ucks) * tornado.cash [https://tornado.cash/] is becoming a popular way to launder crypto [https://anchain.ai/2022/01/18/tornado-cash-the-web3-privacy-puzzle-at-the-heart-of-a-10-billion-epidemic/] . * Advancaed spyware tools are the new bargaining chip in diplomatic negotiations [https://www.nytimes.com/

External reconnaissance is a very important part of a penetration testing engagement. This sets the tone for the engagement and provides essential insight regarding the applications, infrastructure, and people of the client organization.  I use dozens of different resources for external recon. However, before firing up any actual recon tools,

Businesses and organizations today commonly use RFID-enabled cards and key fobs to grant physical access to buildings and property. Unbeknownst to most people and organizations, these RFID cards are often susceptible to unauthorized cloning. As a red teamer, it is my job to test for these vulnerabilities. One of the

When I started my journey in Information Security, I thought password cracking was something only people with super beefy gaming rigs could do effectively. As a poor college student at the time, I thought my laptop with intel i3 & 4 GB of RAM was not enough firepower to even

So everyone knows you need a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection when traveling but not many people talk about what kind of VPN and how to connect. So I'm here to tell you that you need a Wireguard connection using a compact travel router as the secure gateway.

Here are 4 quick (and free) things you can do to DRASTICALLY increase your personal cyber security hygiene (I promise I won't lecture you about using a password manager this time--even though you should!) 1. Identify Your Most Important Online Accounts This is most likely your main email

During penetration testing engagements, I find myself referencing the same half dozen penetration testing blogs and websites. Here they are: 1. WADcoms - This is my favorite resource on this list because it helps identify the most appropriate internal penetration testing tool for the conditions in the environment. You can

I work in the cyber security industry as a penetration tester. I have over seven years of experience helping organizations with identifying weaknesses and preparing for future threats. I will use this platform to share new things I am learning and hopefully pass on some knowledge to others.