Cybersecurity leader since 2006; built 3 SOCs, including a Cogswell Award-winning program. GIAC-certified, Sigma contributor, and author of the first public Detection as Code white paper.
General
Maintaining online privacy in today’s world is nearly impossible without completely disconnecting—and even then, friends and family may inadvertently expose your information through their own weak security practices. Because of this, many people see the effort as futile and don’t even bother. But I completely disagree. A
NSM
When I started in cybersecurity, most web traffic wasn’t encrypted, which meant Firewalls and Network Intrusion Detection Systems played a critical role in detecting malicious activity. Endpoint visibility was limited—most organizations still relied on traditional Anti-Virus
ATT&CK
For the past year and a half, I’ve been on one of the wildest adventures of my life, writing a book on UFOs and UAP. It has taken me through a painstaking process of finding and connecting with people who may hold valuable information for my work.
General
While reading Imminent, a newly released book on UAPs by Luis “Lue” Elizondo, I noticed something intriguing: the text redacted by the Department of Defense was left in plain sight. Naturally, my curiosity kicked in—who wouldn’t want to uncover what’s hidden behind those blacked-out lines?
ATT&CK
It is often mistakenly believed that defenders cannot gain visibility into the early stages of the Cyber Kill Chain before the delivery phase.
DetectionAsCode
Five years ago, I co-authored the first public paper on the concept of Detection as Code. While having some technical peers review this paper, we found that a few more advanced security programs were already utilizing this sort of method, just not publicly talking about it.
Detection
Throughout my cybersecurity career, I’ve had the opportunity to build three Cyber Security Operation Centers (SOCs) from scratch, including two for Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers.
ATT&CK
Recently, the killer vulnerability research team at Qualys discovered a Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability in OpenSSH that exploits a race condition within SSH. This vulnerability is particularly concerning because SSH is commonly exposed to the internet for remote system management.
ATT&CK
The volume and quality of Threat Intelligence for Linux attacks have traditionally lagged behind that for Windows, despite Linux's significant cloud presence. Most reports have focused on reverse engineering Linux-based malware and attack tools.
Detection
If you work in cybersecurity or tech, you’re likely familiar with hashing. A cryptographic hash function generates a fixed-size hash value from any given input data. This is a one-way process, making it computationally infeasible to reverse-engineer the original data from the hash value.
General
This blog post stems from a recent conversation with my former colleague, David Bianco, on the Defender's Dilemma." The Defender's Dilemma is often cited by those without firsthand experience in investigating cybersecurity incidents.
General
A common trope among cybersecurity practitioners is gatekeeping entry-level positions like junior Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts with statements like, "How are you supposed to secure something if you've never managed it?" This is a concept that I **highly** disagree with.