London, UK >  A cyber security professional observing technology, business, and culture with a sceptical – but never cynical – eye, and scratching a writing itch from a previous life as a journalist.

Recent blog posts

View all
Feed
Backutil development: Implementing multiprocessing in Python
 -  I’m still hard at work on Backutil, my simple Windows backup utility with automatic rotation features, fitting in little tweaks and improvements around my daily schedule. The latest of these - and perhaps the most impactful in terms of performance...
Installing Splunk Free in a virtual machine for log analysis
 -  Splunk is considered the gold standard for analysis of event logs and other data, but unless you’re lucky enough to work for an organisation that pays for it, it can be difficult to get practical experience in how to run searches, build dashboards...
File carving: Recovering a deleted file from a Windows disk image
 -  Most computer users assume that when they delete a file and empty the Recycle Bin, it’s gone forever. After all, if Windows doesn’t show us a file, it doesn’t exist anymore, right? Wrong. With the right tools and knowledge, forensics experts can f...
Backutil development: Building and JOINing SQLite databases in Python
 -  This post is something of a development diary for Backutil - my Python-based utility for backing up files from Windows systems. I published the first version of Backutil (v0.51) at the beginning of 2021, and pushed a small update (v0.52) to fix so...
Introducing Backutil: A Python‐based Windows backup utility
 -  Back in the spring, I decided that 2020 would be the year I would finally see a coding project through to completion. A recent work project shone a light on backup and recovery, and I realised that I should probably be a bit more consistent with m...
The best cyber security and technology books I read during 2020
 -  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 co...
AWS: Deploying and connecting to a SQL database in the cloud
 -  My first Amazon Web Services (AWS) basics post covered the process of setting up a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and a Windows Server 2019 EC2 instance. This time we’re going to build on this simple setup by deploying a Amazon Aurora SQL database an...
AWS: Deploying a virtual network and server in the cloud
 -  Having worked on serveral projects involving Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently, but always at arm’s length, I decided to get a bit more hands-on. At worst this would give me a more practical grounding in managing cloud instances, and at best it w...
Cracking a password-protected ZIP file with fcrackzip
 -  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 th...
Network connections and packet crafting on the Linux command line
 -  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 wo...

📓

Field Notes newsletter

A monthly collection of observations, ideas in progress, and the best books, podcasts, and articles I discover

Categories

Index & pages

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