Welcome

This site contains articles and posts I’ve written over the years on career and technical matters. You can also check out past presentations I’ve given at various hacker and cyber security conferences.

2016

 Posted on February 23, 2017  |  3 minutes  |  450 words  |  David Mitchell

2016 has been another crazy year for me, and 2017 is just as crazy. I’ve been putting off updating my site for a while (a whole year). So here is a summary update of just some of the things I’ve been working on for 2016 and the first few months of 2017. Certifications: I am now a Puppet Certified Professional 2016, I guess if its not obvious, I’ve been working even more heavily with Puppet, going to training, writing modules, etc. [Read More]
websphere  puppet  infosec  security 

CarolinaCon 12

 Posted on March 7, 2016  |  2 minutes  |  398 words  |  David Mitchell

I gave another talk for this year’s CarolinaCon 12 called “Never Go Full Spectrum Cyber”. For this talk I focused on mistakes “hackers” and even some InfoSec professionals have made and then a short summary at the end of OpSec lessons that could have prevented the mistakes covered earlier in the talk. The talk slides are here. [UPDATE: The talk video is here.] I referenced OpSec work and talks done by the grugq. [Read More]
hacking  security  infosec  opsec 

Eucalyptus

 Posted on September 15, 2015  |  1 minutes  |  186 words  |  David Mitchell

I recently started with a new company doing more of the role I was in at my previous job focused on J2EE applications, etc. However, I additionally ended up taking over management of Eucalyptus which is an AWS compatible cloud solution. It’s been an exciting change of pace over configuring, troubleshooting, and restarting JVM’s. I’ve worked heavily with it and its underlying open source components that it utilizes like KVM, qemu, S3 (which this site is hosted on an S3 bucket), creating new images (using packer and some fancy script-fu I’ve got it fully automated), and customizing them. [Read More]
cloud  devops  linux 

DefCon 23 and BSides LV

 Posted on August 15, 2015  |  1 minutes  |  145 words  |  David Mitchell

I’m still recovering from Vegas even a week later. So I’m just going to link a bunch of things you should check out and mention a few cool things that happened or that I saw. PowerShell Empire - written in my two favorite scripting languages, may replace Meterpreter someday. Modern Honeypot Network - build your own cloud based network of honeypots that feed results back into a centralized server. HoneyDrive - an okay honeypot VM image (if you for some reason want to run your honeypot in VirtualBox or VMWare) I also put together a DarkNet badge, walked until my knee gave out, attended a lot of events. [Read More]
hacking  security  infosec 

BSides Asheville 2015

 Posted on June 30, 2015  |  1 minutes  |  149 words  |  David Mitchell

Quick summary of a few cons I went to. I went to ISSA conference in Charlotte earlier with FALE, but more recently I went to BSides Asheville as a volunteer. I also participated in their CTF with some Cha-Ha members, and we came very close to winning, but placed second. Some friends and I camped out isntead of staying in a hotel, listened to bluegrass in a mountain bar and saw some talks, etc. [Read More]
hacking  security  infosec 

Defacement Page Design talk

 Posted on March 27, 2015  |  1 minutes  |  69 words  |  David Mitchell

My talk from CarolinaCon is up.

This is not a professional talk, by any means, it was a humorous one, at a hacker con, meant to be somewhat entertaining, delivered late at night. Some of the sites displayed contain profanity, etc. I use some profanity in the talk as well. People liked it, one person told me it was their favorite talk which shocked me. The slides are here.

hacking  funny 

Talk at CarolinaCon

 Posted on February 2, 2015  |  2 minutes  |  236 words  |  David Mitchell

I will be attending CarolinaCon again this year with FALE since we are run the LockPick Village. The big difference this year will be I am giving a talk as well. This will be my first talk at a conference of any kind. Unless something changes I’m scheduled Friday night(Mar 20th) at 10pm. Giving a talk at all was almost unexpected and only came about because they had extended the call for papers by a few days when not enough talks were received. [Read More]
hacking  security  infosec 

Adventures with Docker

 Posted on November 2, 2014  |  1 minutes  |  199 words  |  David Mitchell

I’ve completely messed up my Docker install on the server I was using it on so take my post with a grain of salt. I’ve been messing with Docker for over a year and found it advantageous for a lot of situations. The main thing a Docker container or LXC containers provide me in general, is a sandbox within which to experiment that doesn’t require running a full virtual machine, an extra server, or modifying the native OS settings to try out various applications, packages, or have a self contained environment for using certain software so I can keep it isolated from my base or default environment. [Read More]
devops  linux 

Website input command injection

 Posted on October 2, 2014  |  2 minutes  |  308 words  |  David Mitchell

Someone recently asked for a free pentest in a private security related group for a site they had been working on for a while before it went live. Some of us guys at FALE obliged. Since it was a free pentest, I am taking the liberty to post about it. It was actually my first shell and first box I’ve popped that wasn’t mine. So it was a learning opportunity for me with some subtle direction by those more experienced. [Read More]
hacking  security 

DefCon 22 and BSides LV recap

 Posted on September 2, 2014  |  5 minutes  |  890 words  |  David Mitchell

I managed to make it to Vegas in a rather unexpected way, what originally was a planned beach trip ended up not working out, and I ended up being able to join FALE at BSides LV and DefCon 22. I was working in the mornings, but most of my free time at BSides LV was spent at our lockpick village where we were joined by someone making hand made lockpicks as you can see above. [Read More]
hacking  security