2020-12-22 -  One of the few upsides of the whole 2020 situation is that I’ve had a lot more time to read. Periods that I would usually have spent commuting, out with friends, or cramming in chores between getting home and going to bed became downtime that I could devote to good...

2020-09-12 -  I recently took part in a DFIR capture the flag with some colleagues. Participants were provided with a system disk image and asked to mount it and complete a number of challenges to discover various flags hidden within the data. Exercises like this are always both a lot of fun...

2020-09-02 -  The problem with taking leave during a pandemic is that there are very few places you can go that don’t present an unnecessary risk. For me at least, the thought of taking a plane abroad wasn’t appealing, and neither were the Tube journeys that would be necessary to go out...

2020-07-18 -  What started as curiosity has turned into something of a labour of love. Online information about the Technicolor TG582n router’s event logging capabilities is scarce, and scattered across a number of forums. I’ve used that information along with some analysis of my own to compile this - the missing event...

2020-05-02 -  It’s not just TV presenters who have been broadcasting from their homes during the COVID-19 lockdown. Cyber security conferences have also gone virtual, opening them up to attendees who would otherwise be unable to benefit. Information security conferences are usually few and far between, at least in the UK. In...

2020-03-28 -  After two and a half years in incident response it was time for another SANS course – FOR508: Advanced Incident Response, Threat Hunting, and Digital Forensics – with a tough exam I squeezed in just before COVID-19 consigned us all to our homes. SANS doesn’t seem to stipulate anymore that...

2020-02-15 -  A restless mind, a new feature, and a concerning news story had me worried about privacy over Christmas. Here’s how I installed Pi-hole on my home network to try to block requests from my Samsung Smart TV – and what the data it collected revealed… It was the night before...

2020-02-02 -  Web browsing privacy is of increasing concern as people’s business and personal lives become ever more entwined with the internet. This essay examines various connection scenarios to establish how secure your data really is. Introduction After years of industry concern, web browsing privacy is finally becoming a matter of interest...

2019-11-30 -  It’s been a while… again. Time for another update about what I’ve been up to both professionally and personally and an outline of my plans for 2020, when I’ll be taking a step up in terms of personal projects in my free time. Getting to work My refreshed post-Las Vegas...

2019-08-26 -  Hi – it’s been a while! When I checked my blog I was surprised to see I hadn’t posted in a whole four months, since April. The good news is that I’m back, and I’m more inspired than I have been in a long time to get learning, designing, and...