Securing Silver: My 2nd Place Win at CYBERSECURITY CONFERENCE 2025 CTF in Mannheim
My first comprehensive CTF experience at the CYBERSECURITY CONFERENCE 2025 in Mannheim, where my colleague and I secured 2nd place! We dive into the learning, the race, and essential tips on how to truly prepare (and thrive) in a 24-hour CTF challenge.
Statistical Dreams: The Intimate History of AI
From ancient automatons to the Transformer age, this is the story of how we taught machines to think. We'll dive into breakthroughs like the Perceptron, Backpropagation, and Attention, taking a critical look at AI's origins, its dangers, and where it's headed next.
Python Deserialization Attacks Explained: How Hackers Exploit Pickle (and How to Defend)
Learn how Python deserialization attacks work, see a real Pickle exploit in action, and discover best practices to secure your code against remote code execution vulnerabilities.
Breaking in before the VPN broke down - A Journey through Precious (HTB Writeup)
A full walkthrough of the Hack The Box machine "Precious"; from enumeration to exploitation, including a clever pdfkit command injection and Ruby YAML deserialization for root. With shell stabilisation and some VPN drama on the side.
HTB Reset: From Log Poisoning to Root. Exploiting Tmux, Rexec and Misconfigured Sudo
A deep-dive into escalating from LFI to full root via log poisoning, named pipe reverse shell, misconfigured sudo permissions, and forgotten tmux sessions. Includes analysis of R-services (rexec, rlogin, rsh) and real-world command chaining.
An Intro to Regex: The Hacker’s Guide to Pattern Matching
A hands-on, security-minded introduction to regular expressions - from simple matches to character classes, quantifiers, and real-world examples. Learn to wield regex like a precision tool for parsing, filtering, and hacking.
What I Learned from Bandit Wargames - Level 0-12 (And Why You Should Try It)
Learn practical Linux skills and command-line thinking through the first 12 levels of OverTheWire's Bandit wargame. Sharing lessons, strategies, and powerful command-line tools without spoiling solutions; perfect for aspiring ethical hackers, CTF players, and curious beginners.
A Small Prep Session: PortSwigger Beginner Labs
A short and focused session working through some beginner-level labs from PortSwigger, revisiting the fundamentals of web vulnerabilities like XSS, SQLi, and authentication bypasses.
Uni Exam Practice VM practice: more of LFI2RCE
In this university exam practice VM, I explored file upload handling, discovered a separate file inclusion point, and chained it with an uploaded webshell to gain remote command execution.
Test Exam: Penetration Testing Playbook 01
My personal playbook for my penetration testing test exam, covering all key steps from access via port forwarding to grabbing ALL 8 flags.
Interview Prep Series: Part Two – Technical Deep Dive & Groundwork
Digging into technical fundamentals and real interview questions to sharpen my baseline as a pentester. Inspired by Steflan Security’s interview cheat sheet & my 2nd Cirosec Interview
Interview Prep Series: Part One – Core Concepts & Confidence
Kicking off my interview prep journey with key phases of pentests, handling tricky questions, and building confidence under pressure.
Forensics Challenge Day Three: Carving & Imaging
We dive into forensic imaging, the art of carving, and tools like dd, Foremost, and Scalpel;'essential skills for data recovery and deleted file analysis.
The Final Part: Active Directory Journay Day Five: Building, Securing, and Managing a Domain
Day Five covers key AD admin tasks - user and group creation, GPO management, and domain joins; using PowerShell with a security-focused approach.
Active Directory Journey Day Four: Rights, Privileges, GPOs and a Whole Lot More
This post digs into Group Policy, Active Directory privileges, and built-in groups. I break down who has silent power, how attackers exploit User Rights, and what defenders can do to lock it down. Expect practical cheatsheets, tools, and battle-tested hardening tips.
Active Directory Journey Day Three - All about Users & Groups
This post digs into Active Directory user accounts, local vs. domain context, and why SYSTEM access is a bigger deal than you think. You’ll learn where users live, how machines act like users, and how attackers use this to map, move, and mischief.
Popping Devvortex - Joomla Tricks, Template Shells & Summer Brain Fog
An easy HTB box with enough Joomla, virtual hosts, and reverse shell magic to get you sweating (literally). This walkthrough dives into the quirks of Joomla, web fuzzing, API poking, and template-based RCE. Bring water.
Active Directory Protocols Unpacked: A Practical Learning Journey - Day Two
We're back for day two! The series here are going great hehe. Last time we talked a lot
Forensics Challenge Day Two - Sleuth Kit Deep Dive
On day two of my forensics challenge, I dive deep into Sleuth Kit’s layered toolset. From volumes to inodes, metadata, deleted files, timelines, and journals. I explore the core forensic workflows and decode a real ext4 image step by step.
Active Directory Demystified: A Practical Learning Journey - Day One
Active Directory powers most enterprise networks, and attackers love it. This guide simplifies AD with real-world analogies and attacker-focused insights to help you learn, enumerate, and exploit it effectively.
Digital Forensics Challenge: Basics, Mounting & Analyzing Disk Images (Day 1)
In this introductory forensics lab, we explore how to mount and examine disk images using loop devices, losetup, SleuthKit tools, and file system inspection techniques. A hands-on walkthrough for raw, split, and forensic image formats like AFF and EWF.
From LFI to RCE: Exploiting File Inclusion Like a Pro
A hands-on deep dive into exploiting file inclusion vulnerabilities; from simple LFI to full RCE using session poisoning, log injection, and PHP wrappers.
More to Go: Clean Code & Core Concepts
A hands-on walkthrough of Go’s core building blocks. Arrays, slices, loops, functions, structs, and maps - explained with performance in mind. No fluff, just clarity.
Why Go? A Hacker’s First Dive into Golang
Ever wondered why Go keeps popping up in modern toolchains and cloud-native stacks? Here’s a hands-on dive into the syntax, philosophy, and quirks of Golang; written from a hacker’s point of view.
Carving Chaos: Building and Breaking Filesystems for Fun and Forensics
Crafted a Bash-powered forensics playground: build virtual file systems, inject payloads, carve lost files with Foremost & Scalpel — and hit every roadblock worth debugging.
Introduction to File Inclusion
An in-depth and hands-on walkthrough on spotting and exploiting Local File Inclusion (LFI); from classic payloads to modern bypasses, straight from HTB Academy labs.
From Basic to Blessed: Uplifting Your Webshell Game
From basic payloads to protected and self-destructing shells; a hands-on journey upgrading your webshells for stealth, power, and style.
SQLi Hands-On: Injecting Chaos
A practical deep dive into SQL Injection in DVWA; from simple payloads to reading and writing files, fuzzing with ffuf, and scripting attacks in Burp Suite.
How to Proceed after the User Flag: My Beginner’s Priv Esc Flow
Getting user.txt is just the beginning. Here’s how I hunt for privilege escalation paths on Linux boxes; what I check, how I think, and why it still stumps me sometimes.
My UnderPass Runthrough - Learnings
Cracked the UnderPass HTB box by skipping dead ends, abusing SNMP leaks, and turning mosh-server into a root shell with zero password; here is how.
An Introduction to Shells: Essentials Knowledge
Understand what shells really are, how they evolved, why they matter, and how different types like reverse shells and webshells work.
Why Clean Logs Matter in Forensics - And How to Get Them Right
In digital forensics, documentation is just as important as discovery. This guide introduces a CLI tool that helps forensic analysts create structured, signed, and legally sound logs - from the first command to the final report.
Data Engineering With Dagster Part Eight: Metadata
Dig into materialization metadata, inline visualizations, and best practices for asset observability using Dagster.
Data Engineering With Dagster Part Seven – Event-Driven Pipelines with Sensors
From Passive Pipelines to Reactive Workflows
So far, we’ve scheduled jobs based on time: “Run this every Monday” or
Data Engineering With Dagster Part Six – Partitioning & Backfills
Learn how to make your pipelines smarter by slicing them into manageable, date-based partitions and handling backfills like a pro.
Data Engineering With Dagster Part Five – Automating With Schedules
Dagster finally earns its “orchestrator” title - this part dives into jobs, asset selection, cron expressions, and how to wire everything into automated schedules.
Data Engineering With Dagster – Part Four: Resources, DRY Pipelines, and ETL in Practice
A deeper look at how Dagster handles reusable components like API clients and cloud connectors through resources - with best practices and cookie metaphors baked in.
Data Engineering With Dagster - Part Three: Definitions and Code Locations
How Dagster uses Definitions and Code Locations to scale cleanly across teams, assets, and environments.
What Is Digital Forensics, Really?
A beginner-friendly introduction to digital forensics: from traces and clues to how we reconstruct the past using data.
Data Engineering With Dagster - Part Two: Dependencies, DuckDB, and Geo Heatmaps
Learning to wire assets together, load data into DuckDB, and build heatmaps with real NYC taxi data.
Data Engineering With Dagster - Part One: A Fresh Take on Orchestration
A student-hacker’s perspective on learning data engineering with Dagster: asset-centric thinking, orchestrator basics, and setting up the mental model.
Pentesting 101 – Command Injection & Shell Tricks (Session 1 – Part 2)
After exploring XSS in Part 1, we now dive into server-side command injection, shell behavior, piping, and classic reverse shell tactics.
Basic Introduction to Penetration Testing – some basics & reflected XSS (Session 1 - Part 1)
Lab setup with Kali and Metasploitable 2, safe networking configuration, and a proper starting point for reflected XSS.
Defensive Security Lecture – What SEC Consult Told Us About Phases of a Cyber Crisis
Insights from a guest lecture by SEC Consult on how real-world cyber crises unfold, what defines modern threats, and why proper incident response beats courtroom-ready forensics in most cases.
