Fiction

The Hacker on a Train

It was a crowded train ride during rush hour, and everyone was packed in like sardines. The train was slowly making its way through the city, and people were trying to kill time with their phones or laptops.

At one end of the train, there was a young man, who appeared to be in his mid-20s, typing away furiously on his laptop. He had a serious look on his face, and his eyes were focused on the screen.

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Leadership

Adopting an Attacker Mindset to Defend Healthcare

This post started as a reply to a great topic on LinkedIn, but I hit the character limit so now it’s a blog post!

Years ago I simulated attacks (authorized obviously for the people that have wild imaginations) on a customer which included a physical attack where I walked into a healthcare organization, armed with a suit a smile (and a USB key) I needed to gain access and attempt to move laterally and escalate privileges.

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Hacking

Active Directory Security Cheat Sheet

Ok you need to do some AD Security Auditing or Security Testing/Exploitation, great. Let’s look at some of the common misconfigurations and some tools to help you, a list of things will obviously not be the answer, you will need a method and process to go through from recon/enumeration through to exploitation and impact (effects), but that’s what google is for (and CTFs/Labs)! This post is just me jotting down some notes, hopefully they help defenders think about improving their posture.

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Strategy

Australia National Cyber Strategy Consultation

This morning before I got on with some more dull affairs of business, I saw the following:

2023-2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy Discussion Paper

How we (humanity) and people (including governments etc.) respond to the changing digital landscape and cyber threats that affect society and humanity as a whole is really important. It’s great to see the Australian government using an advisory board and panel structure as they look to review/renew their national cyber security strategy. I’m posting this to raise awareness as I think these things are ever so important that people in the community, industry, academia etc. give their inputs, help and support to the people charged with the incredibly complex task of developing and implementing cyber strategies at country scale! A task not so simple, hence they are calling for inputs as part of a general consultation request from people and organizations.

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Education

Am I a criminal or am I a cybersecurity…

Whilst the common person will largely link the words “hacker/hackers” to criminal the reality is hackers are scientists/artists/creators/ComputerOperators and the choice of being a criminal or not is down to actions and consequences. So the debate about if you identify as “hacker” does that make you a criminal, well it’s nonsense isn’t it. I could call myself a pony but it won’t make me one, much like I could call myself a criminal and I could be entirely law abiding.

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Threat Intel

Pro Russian Hacktivist Groups

Cyberwarfare in Ukraine was hyped as a MASSIVE thing, yet largely it’s been more bark and bite, but perhaps people need to understand that you can’t just “CYBER” a remote network, and even if you could, let’s say you get RCE on 30 networks in a country, so what? There needs to be value, purpose and something that will support other objectives, this isn’t a CTF.

  • Espionage (Collection/CNE)
  • Information Warfare (PsyOps)
  • Computer Network Attacks/Operations (CNA/CNO)
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Education

Is my house spying on me?

Do you ever get the feeing you are being watched? What about listening to it? Do you ever talk about a subject and then see it appear in adverts despite never using a computer to search for it?

Well don’t worry there’s lots of reasons as to why this can occur, and whilst you might want to think someone is spying on you, the truth is they probably aren’t looking for you, but they might be harvesting your data.

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IOT

IoT Security

The digital explosion, the consumerization of technology and the world of internet connected fridges leads to a range of security and privacy risks.

There’s lots of work that’s occurred in this space, for example there is the : Code of Practice for Consumer IoT Security

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