Watching the young ‘uns today playing games like Minecraft takes me back to the late 80s / early 90s when I used to create graphics for the Commodore Amiga using tools such as Deluxe paint and Photon paint. The resolutions we had back then plus the number of available colours were not as great as they are today. We had to learn techniques such as anti-aliasing and cross-hatching to give the illusion of smooth graphics with less rigid edges.
Why people want games with blocky-looking graphics escapes me, but it does trigger memories of nostalgia for the days when I had to create such graphics every time I see such games. Memories of Beneath a Steel Sky, Universe, and Monkey Island. Or the Amiga scene demos.
Now where did I store those old floppies..
Ready player one
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is one of my favourite books. Although to be honest I’ve never actually read it. I have had it read to me, three times in fact, by Wil Wheaton. In my opinion it is absolutely the best way to consume this book. Go try it. Get the audio book and sit back and revel in both the future and the 1980s at the same time. You’ll thank me later.
That’s not the point of this post however. No, I wanted to compare the aforementioned experience to hacking, well ethical hacking obviously. You see, when learning the craft you often spend time exploring virtual rabbit holes getting side-tracked with learning fun tools and techniques. Kind of like Parcival on his egg hunt. Whether he’s learning the lines to War Games or mastering ancient arcade games.
With hacking you can spend days learning a new tool or figuring out how a protocol works. Under normal circumstances that may sound as dull as dishwater, but as part of a gamified hacking challenge it can be a lot of fun. Lots of fun in fact. Especially if it gets you a foothold on a box, or even privilege escalation to root!
Sign up to an ethical hacking platform like Hack The Box or Try Hack Me and you’ll see what I mean. It suddenly becomes fun to learn as you earn points and level up. Plus you start to fill your brain with useful skills and knowledge during the process. Go give it a try. Gamified ethical hacking can be a lot of fun.
Ready player one?
Sorry for your loss
It’s something we say when we don’t know what to say. Someone close to you has passed on. Words can’t make it better. We want to express our sympathy but words fail us so we rely on the old faithful:
Sorry for your loss.
You’ve lost a friend, a good friend. Someone you’ve known for years. Someone you’ve had adventures with, been through stuff with, experienced life with, shared secrets, and dreams. You’ve celebrated their birthdays and anniversaries. Spent time with their loved ones. Had many beers with late into the night, discussing anything and everything.
And now they are gone. Just like that.
Sorry for your loss.
As you get older it happens more and more. You are going to more funerals than weddings and celebrations. You hear it more and more. Loss. Your loss, their loss.
Sorry for your loss.
Don’t ask do
Sometimes you just have to make decisions, take the initiative, go with your gut. Don’t live a life in the shadow of others, asking what they are going to do, what are their plans, what are they going to wear, what time they are planning to turn up, and so on. Be the leader, the doer, the ones others follow.
Create your own mantra.
Take action, make decisions, don’t wait on others. Don’t ask, do.
Throw away culture
I was watching a documentary where people in countries like India and Egypt had lots of these one-person businesses specialising in one thing such as motorbike exhausts, metal cooking pans, mobile phone repair, etc. Where everything was recycled or up-cycled. Nothing was thrown away or wasted. Another person’s trash was something they could re-use to turn into a product or part of a product.
It was fascinating. We have such a throw-away culture here in the UK. It’s far cheaper to buy a new device than attempt to repair the old one, partly due to the cost of spare parts and labour costs plus taxes, and partly because many manufacturers don’t support their products for long and access to spare parts can be limited, if they are available at all.
Yet in this documentary these individuals made their own parts or harvested them from other devices. There was less going into landfills.
This inspired me. I have this all-in-one printer that is sitting at the end of my desk no longer working properly. I had started to research new printers to see what I would buy next. But I really liked the one I had. I could get ink cheaply for it. It had a paper feeder hidden underneath rather than those top-loading ones where the paper can flop awkwardly forwards and needs constant reloading. The scanner worked smoothly and it was a great photocopier. Plus I didn’t want to toss another device in a landfill.
Inspired by the documentary I decided to see if I could repair it myself. I did some online googling and watched a few YouTube videos and then bought some stuff online.
Once it all arrived it took an hour or so but I’m happy to say that my printer now works like new. Everything I bought is either part of the working printer or can be used to repair it in future. I did not consign another electronic device to the local dump.
There’s nothing for you in the past
There’s nothing for you in the past. It’s worth repeating that to yourself once in a while. There’s nothing for you in the past.
Many of us spend way too much of our time thinking about things that happened in the past. How we could have done this or that. Maybe if we made this decision, or chose that job, or that friend. Or maybe we reminisce on the good old times. Ruminate on what it would be like to bring something back, or to revisit something again.
It can become self destructive and can hinder both your direction in life and your mental health. Stop living in the past and live in the present. The past is a lonely place full of memories where nothing can be changed. Move on with your life, focus on the present and the future.
AV Test
I’m occasionally asked what antivirus tool I use, or what anti malware tool, personal firewall software, etc. My answer changes with each passing year. New tools emerge, old ones don’t score so well or become bloated with features I don’t need.
These days I just point people at AV Test. These guys do all the heavy lifting for you. They test the commercial and free security tools, putting them through rigorous testing and benchmarking. They then collate the results and present them to you for free to make your own choices.
So next time you want to know what the best antivirus tool is for your device head on over to AV Test. I check in at least once a year to see if I need to upgrade my own setup.
ChatGPT hacking buddy
I’ve given many talks on cyber security and ethical hacking over the past few years and one of the things I tend to say a lot is: “There is no such thing as cheating in hacking”.
What I mean by this is that as long as you are learning you are not cheating. It’s only when you take shortcuts and learn nothing in the process that you are cheating yourself.
So when attempting a CTF or Hack the Box or Try Hack Me machine and you get stuck and you have exhausted every technique and trick that you know and nothing is working, sure, go search for a writeup or forum posts on how to progress. Read just enough to get yourself unstuck and then keep going. Learn the technique, tool, or whatever you needed to know to progress. Add it to your knowledge-base.
This is learning not cheating. Finding the answer but not learning how and why it worked is just cheating yourself.
Recently I found myself stuck on a CTF that I was taking part in for fun. It was brand new so there were no writeups or forum articles to peek at. And I was stuck. In theory I could just move on to the next challenge and come back to this one later, time allowing, but I was having fun and I wanted to figure out why my solution wasn’t working. I wanted to learn, now.
I decided to see if AI could help. I’ve been playing around with the free version of ChatGPT recently and wondered if I could make use of it in this situation. I gave it a copy of the code from a program I had disassembled as part of the CTF and asked it to tell me what the code was doing. It did, in great detail. I then asked it how I could extract certain data that the program was storing in memory. It gave me detailed instructions using a tool that I was unfamiliar with. I asked if if I could do the same with another tool I was familiar with. It kindly said no and offered to teach me how to use the tool it recommended. I agreed and learned how to use the tool and managed to make progress.
I then continued hacking at the CTF asking ChatGPT for assistance when required. Although technically cheating, I was constantly learning throughout, and allthough I managed to get some virtual points on a virtual scoreboard, they were worthless in the real world, but the knowledge I gained from hacking with ChatGPT was priceless.
So now when I get really stuck and I’ve exhausted everything I know, I turn to ChatGPT as my AI hacking buddy. Only after I’ve finished the challenge, or both ChatGPT and I have failed to come up with a solution do I go looking for a writeup.
The town centre
It’s nice to have a change of scenery once in a while, especially when writing. Looking at the same surroundings day after day can become somewhat dull after a while. To shake things up I like to hop on a bus and travel to a high street in any nearby town, find a coffee shop or bar, find a seat by a window, unpack my mobile office from my go bag, and start writing.
Over the past few years I’ve noticed a real change in the high streets I visit: less big chains, more empty shops, and more of a diverse specific set of shops.
It may be different where you live but I’m seeing more vape shops, nail and hair salons, foreign supermarkets, tattoo parlors, phone and gadget accessory shops, betting shops, and cheap shops (known as pound shops in the UK).
Supply and demand would indicate that there is a need for these stores if they are thriving. I believe that these are not new shops, just new to the high street. Maybe they were once down a side street or high street adjacent.
With the big chains going into administration or reducing the number of stores they operate, we are seeing more space opening up on the high street, and nature abhors a vacuum, or at least commercial landlords do. Rents are negotiated downwards, government initiatives are introduced around business rates to encourage entrepreneurs to take up the opportunity, and voila! We have shops that usually occupy an off high street location being relocated on it side-by-side with the few remaining big chains.
Don’t get me wrong, I think change is good. I’m all for a diverse high street meeting the needs of the people. I’m just curious to see how it evolves further.
What are your thoughts? Do you still visit your local high street? Do you think the high street has a future in our evolving culture?
Dead zones
I like to write when I’m out and about. Cafes, bars, anywhere with a table and seat. Somewhere that I can unfurl my bluetooth keyboard and just start typing, downloading my thoughts into the cloud.
Occasionally you come across dead zones. Places where there is no phone signal or wifi. Your device cannot talk to the cloud. Sure you can type, but you can’t do any online research and you can’t save to the cloud.
Dead zones can be peaceful. Just you and your thoughts and your unconnected device. You can still write. You also have the added advantage that no one can reach you!
In some places there may be no phone signal but there may be wifi, but do you trust it? When I find a comfy spot that is in a dead zone I sometimes move to an area with signal and download everything I need then return to the dead zone to work, free from distractions. Bliss!