AI
Imagine building what you describe as the most powerful AI enabled cyber tool…. and then showing the world that you put it in a lab where a single box compromise led to it having unrestricted and unmonitored internet access… that would be awkward would it not? Here’s an LLMs take on this…
Read more “If it’s so powerful, it’s a shame you didn’t use it for defense design”
Strategy
TL;DR: wp2shell (CVE-2026-63030 chained with CVE-2026-60137) matters because it is a core, pre-authentication RCE reachable on a stock, plugin-free install. That is the rare category. In 25 years, unauthenticated code execution against a bare WordPress install has happened only a handful of times. The overwhelming majority of WordPress mass compromise has ridden the plugin and theme supply chain and infrastructure abuse, not core. This post maps the history so you can see where wp2shell actually sits.
Read more “From TimThumb to wp2shell: 25 Years of WordPress Mass Exploitation”
Leadership
We should block the RMM! We should block that IP! We should block that port! The trouble is; there’s 65535 ports per protocol (TCP/UDP), there’s billions of IPs (dynamic and rotating infra are a thing), and well that’s a lot of work, neve ending, in fact!!
This topic has come up a number of times recently so I thought I’d put it into a blog, so I had Claude generate this based on my quick fire views:
Read more “You Cannot Block Infinity”
Education
Incidents are a part of life, but so is understanding the scope and bounds of an incident. One subject that comes up form time to time is how to define what is and is not ‘part of the incident’. Not everyone uses the same terms, language or definitions (which is true of many things in life). But when it comes to cyber incidents on the ground, details matter, but so do decisions!
Is the role of incident response to solve all security challenges and gaps in an enterprise? Should the recovery phase mitigate all threats? should the entire business be changed due to an incident and is that the role of the response team? When do you define what is and what is not part of the response vs what is a business change project?
Read more “Avoiding an infinite incident response cycle!”
Education
I was pottering about (not like a wizard, more like a cold infected zombie!) and an email hit my mailbox with the “Head of Cyber Architecture” at BA. I have no intention of applying but I thought.. I wonder if this is a good exercise to show people how I would go about the exercise? Well to even begin this I need to write down some notes. So I guess here we go… how far I get into this “fantast football” style scenario who knows, but hopefully it will show some people how I might do things! First up let’s look at the raw requirement:
Read more “How would I apply to the role of “Head of Cyber Architecture””
Strategy
When forming a strategy you must realise for starts that people view the word strategy differently. However, the general view is STRATEGY AS A PLAN. Without a PLAN a strategy is a DREAM.
The plan must be supported by a rang of factors, it must also be managed. It should be something which helps you go from where you are (CURRENT STATE) to where you want to be (FUTURE STATE) and should have a roadmap (TRANSITION PLAN/ROADMP) of how you will get there.
When we talk about can I see your strategy, you will need to have it documented, a strategy without a document isn’t a strategy that can be shared and communicated. As to what “THE STRATEGY” document must be… well there is no such thing as a MUST, but there’s some component that are largely and widely recognised to be useful.
Read more “Strategy”
Guides
Have you every tried to understand the risk level of a service? Ever wanted to provide assurance to someone that “it’s been well designed, is secure from common threats, likely risk scenarios and is securely operated” etc.? have you ever tried to conduct testing against a service that is relatively unknown? Ever needed to actually do more than throw some packets at the front door? Guess what, I have. Most orgs don’t have a decent level of documentation on service architecture and security controls. And as the NSA nicely put, the way they get into networks is to know them better than you do! So in my travels I see lots of different orgs and largely there’s one common similarity, most of them aren’t well documented (docs are boring right!) and if we then make another huge sweeping generalisation, about 90% of orgs have security postures you wouldn’t want to have to defend as a blue teamer, but you might fancy if you were a nation state actor or cyber criminal!
Read more “Service Security Architecture and Assurance”
Leadership
I am seeing lots of “debate” about the value in red teaming, so I thought I would put together my thought process of how I look at as a broad stroke when I consider a generic starting position in an organisation. When I’m defending a business, I tend to ask myself (and the team/customers etc.) these kind of questions (they are not exhaustive):
Read more “Red Team Readiness Assessment”
Education
Everyone these days seems to rush towards “the solution”, well as someone who now has few years under their belt, I’d advise people slow down a little and think about their business requirements, outcomes, current state, and constraints. Significantly as well think about how a service will run over a period, not just how to buy it and “fling it into production”.
Read more “Stop rushing for “the solution”!”
Architecture
I’ve travelled all over the internet, I’ve worked with logs of organisations from banks through to small ISVs and one thing I would say is fairly universally true. What can be isn’t what is.
There’s a lot of different operating models and technologies in the world. There’s logs of differen’t specifics. This diagram here is not mean’t as a refrence architecture but more as an indicator.
There is also a massive reality people must understand, cyber good most definatley costs more at the point of deployment than cyber bad. Cyber bad’s ROI is truly variable and in mind mind is too hard to measure. For one org with cyber bad can experiance a significant breach (and cost) and another may have lady luck on their side.
Read more “The difference between what can be vs what often is – Cyber Architecture”