I’ve started a new project: pocket-sized zines that explain tech, hacking, and DIY tools in a way that’s quick, sharp, and easy to share. Each zine is eight pages, printed on a single sheet, folded down into a mini guide you can toss in your bag or pass along to someone curious. I was inspired by some other zines online , and some of them may interest you too! Check out them here:  Really Basic Digital Security Books Unbanned Here are the folding instructions if you need them! Sometimes cutting the paper is required.  These aren’t polished manuals — they’re  hackery field notes . The goal is to cut through jargon and give you just enough to understand, experiment, and explore. Here’s what’s out so far: AI & Your Privacy Why & How to Wardrive Make an Internet-in-a-Box There are many more coming out soon! So keep your eyes peeled. Print these and share them in your local coffee shop, local small businesses, libraries, co-working spaces, and clubs! Feel free t...

Let's make a phishing attack (just kidding). The easiest way to do so is obtaining a pre-made phishing kit. Phishing kits represent a significant and growing danger. These tools, readily available in the darker corners of the internet, empower even technically unsophisticated criminals to launch effective phishing campaigns. This post aims to demystify phishing kits, explore their dangers, and provide practical advice on safeguarding against these insidious threats.  Phishing kits are pre-packaged sets of tools and resources designed to facilitate phishing attacks. The parts of a phishing kit can be broken down into the following components: Email templates Webpage clones (usually scraped from the legit site) Scripts and code repositories  Hosting Platforms Delivery Systems Readme & docs Premium services Real-time data analysis tools Customer service* Social engineering tools These kits are designed for ease of use, allowing attackers to launch phishing campaigns with mini...

 The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is an international coalition focused on unifying the global response to cybercrime, particularly phishing and e-mail fraud. Established in 2003, APWG brings together businesses, government entities, law enforcement, and non-governmental organizations to combat phishing, crimeware, and e-mail spoofing.They create regular reports on the nature of phishing "in the wild" and share trends in this report. You can download the report here .  I wanted to report on a more recent trend report, but at the time of writing I haven't seen a newer one. It being in the middle of 2023, I believe the report is recent enough.  I found a few areas of interest, and questioned a few pieces. There was a reported downward trend in phishing. Despite the high numbers, there was a notable downward trend in phishing by the end of the quarter, indicating a possible shift in tactics or improved countermeasures. I have doubt that phishing is occurring less,...

Hi! Did you just acquire a NTAG215 NFC tag? Very cool. Maybe you scanned it and it brought you here. Here's how to edit the content on the tag to make it do what you want.  Easy Steps Download an NFC writing app on a smartphone like this one for Android or this one for iPhone. I assume you might have this app already if you're reading this tag. Done Decide what type of data you want to save. If you picked up more than one of the NFC tags, you may have a variety of data saved to them like the ones below: Plain text URL/URI Link to a search Social networks Video File Application Mail Contact Phone number SMS Location Address Proximity search Street View Emergency info Bitcoin address Bluetooth connection WiFi network settings other custom fields Make sure if you select the correct format to make it easier to scan, save the write data, and re-scan the tag. Switch back to the read function and test your tag! Next Method The above method doesn't cover making everything, such a...

As a solution's architect, I want to keep up on my cloud skills. As noted in my previous New Year's Resolution post , I'm looking to get the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (SAA-C03) exam, and the Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) certification is the one that precedes this SAA-C03 exam.  After speaking to others who have passed the SAA-C03 exam, they mentioned more than half the content is the same as the CLF-C01 exam. The exam has been updated last September and has changed content moving to the C02 edition. So I believe it's foundational to take this exam first.  As a former academic, I have a high standard to passing the exam. While I'm already passing some practice exams, I don't want to sit for the exam until I'm getting over 90% on the practice exams. What's the point of barely scraping by when I'm doing this to truly gain skills and knowledge? Below I'm going to outline what I've been using to study. AWS Skill Builder I do pa...

Welcome back! It's another New Year's blog post. Let's get right into my goals for this year. 1. Obtain the AWS Solutions Architect certification Right now, I'm working as a Solutions Architect, and I'm all about boosting my career with the right certification. I absolutely love what I do and want to get even better at it, so I can be an even more valuable part of my company. Even though I've got a master's degree, I'm hungry to learn more and up my game. I'm currently getting ready for the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam, which is set for February 23rd. What's interesting is that a big chunk of the stuff in this exam is also in the Solutions Architect (SA) exam. I'm making good progress with my studies, and I'm pretty confident that I'll be all set to tackle the exam by the end of the year. I'm on a mission to move up in my career, prove my worth, and pick up some fresh skills along the way. Some folks really value high...

 Hello! If you've found this post it's likely you're looking to participate in 2023's World Wide WarDrive hosted by WiGLE.net Getting started in wardriving is easy. You don't need a fancy rig or a bunch of antennas to get going.  In the next article we'll be building a rig using a Raspberry Pi or other mini-computer that can run Kali Linux. It's the second easiest rig to make. The first is using a phone! Rig 1: The Android Phone   This one is pretty simple. You need to find an Android phone, change a couple of settings, and download the WiGLE.net app.  Find an old Android phone you have laying around. If you don't have one, I recommend going to a used video game store and looking there for one. Or, if you're willing to use Amazon, this phone isn't a bad place to start. Almost any BLU phone or unlocked Android will work.  Change a couple of settings Go to Settings, scroll down and select 'About This Device' Enable Developer Mode - this is...

 If you have a little change from your tax return, I have a suggestion on where you should spend it this year. This is not sponsored, not an advertisement, and I do not benefit from these companies. I paid for these services out of pocket on my own. Okay. We all know how scary OSINT can be, being able to look up public information such as age and home address. We hand over this information readily when we use certain products and services. Some of this information is also kept at a criminal level, such as criminal record lookups.  That's not the only information we hand over, we are tracked and have our data collected every day through data brokers. They profit off of our identities selling it back to one another constantly.  There are services now that will automate the removal of your data from data brokers. I found Aura and Incogni when promoted online. Both of them had a referral code, but also a standard discount for an annual subscription instead of monthly. At the ...

  CactusCon Track 1 Day 2 Go to 1:10:30 to the start of the talk. 

Welcome to my New Year's Resolutions! I feel a little vulnerable sharing my goals publicly and auditing if I failed or succeeded over the year.  My 2023 Resolutions 1) HACK THE PLANET! 2) Upload to WiGLE every month 3) Post to the blog at least once a month 4) Continue to follow and maintain my vision board. Don't judge me! I thought they were cheesy and weird, but it's been so effective. I made a blog post about it already, but just as a refresher my current board is below. A vision board is almost a resolution list in of itself. These are all the things I want to achieve in the near future.  5) Pass the HAM radio exam 6) Continue in content creation and make articles or a podcast Let's go over what my resolutions where last year: My 2022 Resolutions 1) Make it to 500,000 unique wifi networks I made it in November! I achieved this goal and obtained the gold WiGLE badge.  2) Upload to WiGLE every month I made this most months, but not every month. I will try again! 3) W...

 I've attempted, with mixed results, to establish a hashtag on Mastodon on Wednesdays for wardriving. Why? Because I feel like it. There are so many awesome people in the wardriving space that could probably do it better, but I'm going to do it instead.  I cannot recall where I heard this general rule of thumb, but I believe it was Dragorn who said " For every adapter you can go about 10mph ". I wonder how true that is, and I wonder more how I would begin to test that theory. This is something I'd like to figure out, and will likely need some assistance.  I also plan on remaking my rigs with raspberry pi alternatives. Right now there is a lot of drama surrounding raspberry pi, but I'm doing it just because of the cost and supply issues. There are many alternatives now, and I'm sure they'll make a few rigs. I'll keep the updates posted under the hashtag on Wednesday. If you're interested in wardriving you should join the RF Sanctuary Discord. ...

 Which browser do you use? Thanks for any boosts! I wanna know! Oh cool! More internet points! I made this poll and it got some attention so I thought I'd share it.  The first 54 votes of 26,177 were erased after I edited the poll. If you edit a poll's options, such as adding one, all of the votes go back to zero. Oops. I forgot to add safari, and are large amount of people let me know. The most popular "other" answer was  Vivaldi . Other popular answers were versions of Chromium and DuckDuckGo.  While this was the final results, for a majority of the time, Firefox has a much stronger lead against Chrome. The poll started first around infosec.exchange  when the lead was large, and as the poll moved around the fediverse, the gap narrowed.  A couple other comments sounded like "Why only one option" or why they picked their particular browser. I definitely got the information I was looking for. Check out the post  for more replies and cool facts!  E...

Your smartphone is your best friend and worst enemy. Are you being listened to? Do you want to listen to someone else? This apps on your phone know more about you than you think, and there are more tools to make you cringe. Yes and no, “they are listening.” The apps are gathering so much information it seems like they are listening. This talk will discuss what privacy concerns you should have with your smartphone and will discuss how you can use your smartphone to do some surveillance of your own.  

I feel like Twitter is going through that phase between high school and college where you're saying goodbye to everyone and going their separate ways (I paraphrased that from someone else on Twitter).  Follow me on the Internet:   Twitter:  @dnsprincess Instagram: @yourdnsprincess Bio: https://bio.fm/alissa alissa@dnsprincess.com Mastodon: @dnsprincess@infosec.exchange

 Hey y'all! I know I've missed my 2022 resolution to post once a month on the blog. It's something I think about frequently. I have been pouring my efforts into other areas of my life and haven't set enough time to create content or write blog posts. I've recently been reinvigorated after coming back from GrrCON 2022. Not only was GrrCON so much fun, I presented a pretty good talk: Hey Ma' Where's Malware Come From? It'll have it's own blog post once all the content is ready.  If you want to follow along, make your own vision board for free here .  I have a lot on my plate of tasks I don't attend to; things I want to do and things I need to do. I decided to help me clarify my goals and give myself some good mile markers via a vision board. Here's what the board means to me: (from left to right) Fox: I want to strive to do my best a work and position myself for future career growth and opportunities. I value where I work and want to be a helpf...

Inspired by others, and my goal of getting a golden WiGLE badge, I went wardriving for my birthday. I was hoping for 50k, and I ended up with just over 61k. I'm less than 80k away from my goal! But how do you pick a place to wardrive, and how do you actually do  it? The easiest way is to download WiGLE on an android phone, get some transportation, and be set on your way. But if you want more detail or some tips, keep reading.  Avon Lady Method : Find a city within reasonable distance of travel Examine the results for the past few years of the area; do not use the overall coverage of all time.  Verify if the city is desirable for wardriving Little coverage in the past few years Most residential areas are not covered Use maps to search and define high density residential areas (i.e. apartments, town homes).  Create an order that allows for little overlapping and in a convenient driving pattern. Use landmarks around the city to define the internal roads Wardrive Profit ...