NotAwful

Hacking the Blue Team Village Badge (DC27)

Hello! This year at Def Con 27 (2019), a friend of mine reserved me a Blue Team Village badge. Commas go where your heart desires. It is, in my opinion, the coolest of all the badges I saw at Def Con 27 because of all the cool, useful things it

Other

DEF CON 27 (2019) Travel Debrief

Hi there! It has been a while since I made a post on my blog, and I figured what better than to do a wrap-up of my very successful DEFCON 27 trip. It was a blast and I got to meet up with some of my best friends for the

Guides

Windows Reference Images for Rapid Virtual Machine Deployment

This article was last updated 2018-12-07. Hello! When I was learning system and network administration, building test environments and virtual labs was a vital skill. When working with Windows administration having solid, up-to-date reference images sped up testing by enabling us to tear down and reset environments in minutes. Creating

Technology

Python Image Crawler, Part 2

Alright, so I wanted to work on my last crawler that did a couple new things. Here are the goals for this one. Use lxml's etree html parser over bs4 Separate into functions / clean up code a bit Cut out duplicate entries I do not understand xpaths, but that's the

Technology

Hotkeys/Shortcuts/Commands

Just collecting the hotkeys, shortcuts, and commands that I use frequently (and some I use infrequently but often have to go looking for). Windows General Use Win + L: Lock computer (very useful) Win + X: Quick link window (links to a bunch of administrative tools) Win + X, U: Shutdown menu, follow

Technology

Data Security While Traveling

Ohai. I was thinking about how I would secure sensitive data while traveling without inconveniencing myself, of course. I figured it would be an interesting thought to share, to see if anyone wanted to comment on it. Goals: Data is secure in transit Cannot be feasibly coerced into providing access

Technology

Installing and Troubleshooting Netbox

There's a story to this. Short version is a friend posted about netbox, an IP address management and data center infrastructure tool. Later I wanted to redo my virutal lab environment from scratch but with better documentation. I figured I'd set up an instance of netbox to document how my

Technology

Basic Python Web Crawler (Image Search)

I wanted to build a web crawler in python to dive into pages and look for images. So of course the first thing I did was google it. After looking through several pages, I stumbled across this simple article. Well, that seems easy enough let's see if we can't build

Other

College/University Guide

Since I know several young people heading to college or university soon, I thought that I'd write a quick guide for things to do to manage things. This is based on my own experiences. Personal Brand I hate the phrase "personal brand", and I am only using it

Technology

Fixing Ghost on a DigitalOcean Droplet

Hello! I recently moved my blog (you're reading it!) from the official Ghost hosting to DigitalOcean. I can spend a moment talking about why I made the transition: It's hella fucking cheaper and way easier now. That was quick, so I guess now is where I talk about how I

Other

Conference Advice

This is an update to my DEF CON travel advice from 2017. I have made some major changes and separated DEF CON and InfoSec specific advice from general conference advice. Also check out: If you want advice from someone who is a more seasoned traveler about traveling as an introvert

Local Git using Gogs

Hey there. I have been working on getting an installation of Gogs running. I want to get a git instance up that I control so that I can dig into how it works without that showing up on github. Controlling it also means that I can make as many private

Technology

Online Presence on a Budget

I have been thinking about this for a bit now, so I thought I would share. A year ago when I set up my blog and professional email address, tools were a bit limited. There was a lot of it was do-it-yourself, which can be rather annoying and intimidating when

Games

Shadowrun System Analysis: Part Two

In the last post I talked about the core resolution mechanics in Shadowrun Fifth Edition. At the end of that post I talked about three questions that are useful for designing games. What is your game about? How is your game about that? How does your game reward players for

Games

Shadowrun System Analysis: Part One

Shadowrun has a long history in the information security community. I cannot count the number of people with fond memories of Shadowrun and who love to share stories of their previous adventures. The game has a special place for me. I have spent a lot of time learning about tabletop

Technology

Strava Heatmap Implications

Update (2018-01-29): Whitequark on twitter made a tool to scrape the Strava data.[1] Strava, a company that operates a fitness tracking application compatible with the Fitbit, has released a heatmap tool to see global usage of their heatmaps. People have found military bases[2] using the heatmap and people

Other

DEF CON Travel Advice

I was lucky enough to go to BlackHatUSA and DEFCON in 2017. After I returned I wrote about my experiences here. I also wrote a blog post with point-form travel and conference advice. I have updated it below. If you want advice from someone who is a more seasoned traveler

Guides

Building Public Key Infrastructure in Windows

Important note: Due to backend upgrades, the illustrative images used in this post have been lost. As the post is no longer being maintained, they will not be replicated and replaced. The internet relies on Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for SSL/TLS certificates for HTTPS operation, code signing, email certificates,

Technology

Engineering Journals

At the start of college I was told to keep an engineering journal. I was told to write down problems I encountered and how I solved them in detail. The idea is that you should never have to solve the same problem twice. I will share how I structure my

Other

Why I Hate Mathematicians

I was given a question: 1234567891011121314151617181920 / 3 Is the remainder 0 or not 0? I did some classic long division to solve this question: 1234567891011121314151617181920 / 3 = 41522630337040438050539060640 R = 0 I thought I did it quickly, but apparently there is a much faster way. Add each digit in 1234567891011121314151617181920 together: 1+

Technology

Lessons Learned: October, 2017

Lessons Learned is a collection of issues and failures that I encounter each month. Each entry explains the problem that I encountered, the solution I reached, and what I learned from it. This list will be updated periodically. Last Updated: 2017-10-03 Issues 'Error: Invalid Serial Connection', 2017-10-01 Problem: While working

Technology

Password Managers

Over the past couple years I spent time with several password managers. Each password manager I tested addresses different problems. As with all technology, understanding what problems a technology addresses allows you to make informed decisions about its use. I will cover password managers at a high level before going