So, yeah. I haven’t done great at writing here for a while, but that’s fixing to change this year.
However, I *have* been busy elsewhere and it’s probably worth collecting some of that!
I moved from Twitter to Mastodon, and you can find me here. Twitter’s also shuttered its newsletter app, Revue, where “The Cybers Are Weird” was operating. I haven’t decided whether to resurrect it elsewhere yet.
Work has been interesting – from 2017 to 2018 I worked as a third-party systems administrator in the US House of Representatives. From there I catapulted into an IT engineer role (eventually Senior) for Silicon Valley threat intelligence firm Farsight Security – which was acquired in late 2021 by Seattle-based DomainTools. The opportunity arose to move from IT to a full-time security role and I jumped at it. I’ve now been a Security Operations Engineer for a year and love it.
I’ve also been very very busy. In addition to my internal responsibilities I’ve written a number of blog posts at work:
Stop Crypto Kleptos In Their Tracks – about finding a coordinated campaign of IDN replacement domains attacking cryptocurrency-related firms.
Vegas or Bust: A First-timer’s Review of Black Hat and DEFCON – tell you what, Vegas was wild.
Celebrating Neurodiversity: How Companies Can Create Safe Spaces Using Employee Resource Groups – written about partnering with HR’s DEI initiative to facilitate a neurodiverse employee resource group.
The Move To Mastodon: Tips and Tricks – from the perspective of an information security practitioner, how to approach the social media platform Mastodon and rebuild some of the early warning systems I had on twitter.
More Secure Groupware: Self-Hosted Exchange With a Walled Garden – coauthored with friend and esteemed colleague Travis Hall, about our adventures in using Microsoft Exchange in a more secure manner.
I was also spotlighted in a blogpost at work written by the excellent Kali Fencl. And I’ve guested on the excellent Breaking Badness podcast by DomainTools featuring timely commentary by great colleagues like Kelsey LaBelle, Kali Fencl, Tim Helming, my boss CISO Daniel Schwalbe, and more.
2022 saw me attending Wild West Hackin’ Fest: Way West, BlackHat, DEFCON, and more. And it’s been wild, and it’s been hairy, and I’m ready and hungering for more.
OH. Right. I’ve also been busy making memes with StableDiffusion. (I recognize there are some deep issues that need to be ironed out with regard to generative machine-learning systems and how we interact with and use them. We need to work those out as we go rather than eschew them entirely; and while I wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable using these in a commercial manner, using it for some private memeing has been wicked fun.)
