Cyber Security posts

Blog index
All posts
EtherHiding: When good blockchains turn bad
 -  With AI stealing the limelight over the last few years, it’s been a while since it was fashionable to talk about the blockchain. But it’s still out there, most famously used to track cryptocurrency transactions and hold smart contracts. Part of wh...
The untapped potential of AI for security operations
 -  In August 2025, Anthropic announced it had caught a threat actor using Claude in a series of cyber attacks. The large language model (LLM) helped the attacker in their reconnaissance and network compromise, but also in more strategic tasks: choosi...
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) - setting the record straight
 -  When I went to bed on the evening of Friday 19th July, I couldn’t sleep. It was a stuffy summer’s night in London, and the adrenaline was still pumping through my veins after one of the more notable days in recent memory for cyber security. Still,...
Centralisation, repeatability, and automation in a modular SOC
 -  The dictionary definition of “modular” leaves a little to be desired: “Employing or involving a module or modules as the basis of design or construction.” What is implied, but that I would make explicit, is that parts of the whole can be swapped o...
Cyber security sometimes means learning things backwards
 -  Stick around cyber security Twitter or LinkedIn for long enough and you’ll likely see somebody raise a question about how to get into the industry. You’ll also likely see a reply that describes a kind of rite of passage from sysadmin, to SOC analy...
Investigating Explorer's temporary ZIP folders and retrieving files
 -  If I was to describe how often malware is downloaded within ZIP archives, “common” would be a huge understatement. A key artefact in these investigations is the temporary directory Windows creates when a user opens an archive in Explorer, but I re...
Parsing login sessions from the Windows event log with PowerShell
 -  Faced with a day at home recovering from my most recent COVID-19 booster vaccine, I realised I hadn’t written anything more than a few lines of PowerShell in a while and decided to spend some time working on something interesting. The idea occurre...
Linux .bash_history: Basics, behaviours, and forensics
 -  During any incident investigation on a Linux system, one of the most valuable things for responders and forensicators to establish is which commands were run. This is key to finding out what an attacker or malicious user was attempting to do, and ...
SANS Holiday Hack Challenge 2021: Slot machine walkthrough
 -  Here’s one more writeup from the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge! The slot machine hack was one of the showpiece challenges this year, so I thought I’d put together a quick blog post to guide you through the process of identifying and exploiting a vul...
SANS Holiday Hack Challenge 2021: Yara rule analysis walkthrough
 -  Over the Christmas break I took part in an annual tradition - the SANS Holiday Hack Challenge! For 2021 the team had put together a fresh set of challenges for this festive CTF, and now that the deadline for submissions and subsequent embargo has ...

📓

Field Notes newsletter

A monthly roundup of my latest writing, plus exclusive links and observations

Categories

Index & projects

Blog index

Thinking about

Digital journalism
Coincidentally, in the space of a week I encountered both Zach Seward's article about Quartz and Craig Mod's excellent podcasts with Tim Ferriss. Both evoked fond memories of my time in journalism and the buzz surrounding digital journalism and media in the 2010s

Interests

  • Cyber security
  • Tech
  • Python
  • PowerShell
  • JavaScript
  • F1
  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Psychology
  • Philosophy
  • Exercise
  • Running
  • Gaming
  • Football
  • Music
  • Guitar