A specialized guide for Red Team operators on exfiltrating and migrating data from a target MySQL database to a local PostgreSQL instance. Learn how to use Docker for rapid infrastructure deployment, pgloader for automated schema conversion, and handle both live network migrations and offline dump analysis.
A guide to SSH multiplexing and master control sockets for red team work. Covers running concurrent sessions over a single TCP connection, reducing connection churn, and the risks of socket hijacking.
This article explains Scenario-Based Testing (SBT) in detail, its benefits, tools and techniques used, and provides examples of how SBT can be used in Red Team Exercises to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses in an organization’s security defenses.
This article is an introduction to the Lua programming language for pen testers and red team members, covering its basic concepts and syntax, examples of its use in network analysis, password cracking, and web scraping, and weighing its pros and cons compared to other languages.
PowerShell for operators. The syntax you actually need, working examples for a port scanner, a hash-cracking loop, and a web crawler, and an honest take on where PowerShell fits and where it gets you caught on a Windows engagement.
The CTI lifecycle from an operator’s seat. Setting collection requirements, OSINT and closed-source gathering, kill-chain and Diamond Model analysis, STIX/TAXII dissemination, and feeding real adversary TTPs back into red team planning.
This article explores advanced heap spraying techniques used by red teams and pen testers to exploit vulnerabilities in software applications, including non-ASLR and ASLR-based heap spraying, and Unicode heap spraying, with real-world examples and tools.
This article explores advanced memory forensics techniques for detecting malicious activity in memory, including process timelining, high-low level analysis, walking the VAD tree, and detecting rogue processes, kernel-level rootkits, DLL hijacking, process hollowing, and sophisticated persistence mechanisms.
This article explores the prevention techniques for Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) and Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks in web applications, providing real-world examples, and includes code samples in various web programming languages.
BloodHound is a powerful tool for analyzing Active Directory environments, helping red teamers and pen testers visualize complex relationships, identify security risks and attack paths, and develop effective mitigation strategies to strengthen an organization’s security posture.
Part three of the Red Team Operations series. How operators simulate supply chain attacks on engagement, the canonical real-world case studies that justify the budget (SolarWinds, NotPetya, CCleaner, Kaseya, Codecov, 3CX, MOVEit, XZ Utils), the engagement-scoping considerations that make supply-chain testing different from regular red team work, and the defender controls (SBOM, signing, build provenance via SLSA, dependency review) that actually move the needle.
A working tour of Kotlin from a security perspective. Language basics for operators who haven’t written Kotlin before, the Android RE reality (Kotlin became Google’s first-class Android language in 2017 and most modern Android apps you reverse-engineer are now Kotlin), the operator-side applications that make sense in Kotlin versus the ones that don’t, and the trade-offs versus Java, Python, and Go for offensive work in 2026.
The defender-side companion to the IoT hacking post. What actually works for securing IoT devices in 2026, organized around the controls operators look for during testing (secure boot, signed firmware updates, TLS 1.3 with mutual auth, credential management, IoT-VLAN segmentation, anomaly detection). Includes the canonical IoT vulnerability families (Ripple20, URGENT/11, Name:Wreck, AMNESIA:33), the modern IoT-specific monitoring platforms (Armis, Forescout, Claroty, Nozomi, Microsoft Defender for IoT), and the Matter protocol that’s finally bringing baseline crypto identity to consumer smart-home devices.
A working tour of Cody Thomas’s Mythic C2 framework. Architecture (Docker-deployed server plus pluggable agents and C2 profiles), the actual current agent lineup in 2026 (Apollo, Poseidon, Apfell, Athena, Xenon, Medusa, Thanatos, Freyja, Sage), the install workflow with mythic-cli, how Mythic compares to Sliver, Cobalt Strike, and Havoc, and where it fits in a modern engagement stack.
An operator-relevant tour of cloud security in 2026. The shared-responsibility model, the controls that actually matter (IAM, encryption, network isolation, logging), the findings that show up on every engagement (misconfigured S3, IMDS abuse, over-privileged IAM roles, public Kubernetes consoles), the modern tooling stack (Prowler, ScoutSuite, Steampipe, commercial CSPMs), and corrected versions of the canonical case studies (Capital One, Tesla, Marriott, Deep Root, Docker Hub).
This article introduces and explains exploit development techniques, best practices, and examples for a technical audience of red teams and pen testers.
Operator-side walkthrough of targeted phishing. OSINT-driven target research, Cialdini’s principles applied to email lures, the technical kit (GoPhish, Evilginx, SET), what whaling actually means (and doesn’t), the mistakes that get phishing campaigns caught, and corrected case studies (the 2016 Podesta phish, the Bangladesh Bank heist, the 2023 Scattered Spider helpdesk vishing of MGM and Caesars).
A working overview of SharpSocks, Nettitude’s .NET tool for tunneling a SOCKS proxy through an implant inside the target network. Architecture, deployment, how it pairs with PoshC2 and other frameworks, the pivoting patterns operators actually use it for, and how it compares to modern alternatives (Chisel, ligolo-ng, gost) in 2026.
An operator’s walkthrough of red team engagement types (network pentest, social engineering, physical, red-vs-blue, purple team, multiscenario, full spectrum, tabletop), the five-phase methodology that structures most engagements (recon, scanning, exploitation, post-exploitation, reporting), the actual tooling stack at each phase, and the case studies (DoD Cyber Flag, Verizon DBIR-derived attack-pattern data) worth grounding the work in.
A working tour of Swift from a security perspective. Language basics for operators who haven’t written Swift before, then the offensive applications that matter on Apple platforms (network primitives via the Network framework, port scanning with NWConnection, hashing with CryptoKit and SwiftCrypto, file-system reconnaissance, OSINT-style API consumption, basic TCP listeners, payload encoding), and the trade-offs of Swift versus Python, Go, and Rust for operator use in 2026.
A working analyst’s tour of dynamic malware analysis. Static triage of the PE header in PEStudio and Detect It Easy, unpacking with x64dbg and Scylla, memory forensics with Volatility 3, VBA macro de-obfuscation with olevba, network monitoring with Wireshark, and the anti-analysis tricks (PEB checks, RDTSC timing, MAC address sniffing, sandbox-detection via mouse movement) that modern families ship by default. Case studies include WannaCry, TrickBot, and Emotet.
An operator’s tour of physical pen testing tradecraft. Social engineering and pretexting, lock picking and bypass, RFID and NFC cloning with the Proxmark3 and Flipper Zero, Wiegand attacks with BLEKey/ESPKey, surveillance and counter-surveillance, network dropboxes (Hak5 LAN Turtle, Packet Squirrel), HID attack tools (Bash Bunny, Rubber Ducky), and the USB-drop technique. Closes with the Coalfire Iowa courthouse arrest as a worked example of why authorization scope matters.
A working tour of Ryan Cobb’s Covenant C2 framework from an operator’s perspective. Architecture (server, Grunts, listeners, dynamically compiled .NET tasks), AMSI and ETW patching as a survival prerequisite on modern Windows, SMB named-pipe P2P routing for jumping into segmented zones, Donut shellcode wrapping for non-.NET payloads, and writing custom tasks. Covenant is effectively unmaintained, but the design choices it pioneered are still in Sliver, Mythic, and Havoc.
A working tour of IoT hacking from an operator’s perspective. Hardware attack surface (UART, JTAG, SPI flash dumps), firmware extraction and emulation with binwalk and qemu-user-static, radio attacks (SDR replay, BLE GATT writes, Zigbee key sniffing), the CAN bus and SocketCAN on automotive targets, and exposed MQTT brokers. Closes with Mirai, the Jeep Cherokee remote takeover, and Rose & Ramsey’s BLE smart-lock work at DEF CON 24.
A working tour of Java from a security perspective. Language basics for operators who haven’t written Java before, then the offensive applications that matter (network scanning, web exploitation, Burp extensions, Java deserialization, JNDI injection and the Log4Shell era), reverse engineering of obfuscated Java with CFR and JADX, and the trade-offs of Java versus other languages on offensive engagements.
A working operator’s view of firewall and IDS bypass in 2026. Fragmentation and decoy scanning against weak setups, DNS and ICMP tunneling where the channel is still open, SSH SOCKS proxying for quick pivots, Chisel and Ligolo-ng for serious tunneling work, and the realities of domain fronting now that the major CDNs have killed it. Plus what modern next-gen firewall and IDS technology (TLS inspection, JA3/JA4 fingerprinting, ECH) leaves open for the operator and what it doesn’t.
A working operator’s view of Nishang, the PowerShell post-exploitation toolkit Nikhil Mittal built starting in 2012. What it does well, where Defender catches it on sight in 2026, which modules still matter, and how it fits with modern frameworks (Empire 5.x, Sliver, Mythic). Plus an operator-honest read on AMSI and Constrained Language Mode and what they leave behind for stock PowerShell tools on a current Windows endpoint.
A working operator’s view of CSRF and XXE in 2026. Where the classic attacks still work, where browser defaults (SameSite=Lax in Chrome/Edge, secure-by-default XML parsers) have closed the textbook cases, and the modern attack surfaces that still produce findings (GET state-change endpoints, JSON content-type confusion, SVG and OOXML file upload, SAML implementations, the SysAid CVE-2025-2775 XXE-to-RCE chain).
A working operator’s view of Go as the target-side language of choice. Cross-compilation for any OS from any host, statically linked binaries with no runtime dependencies, native Win32 calling, and the modern C2 agent ecosystem that runs on it (Sliver, Havoc’s Go agent). Plus the realities of Go in 2026, the static fingerprints EDR uses to identify it on disk, and what garble and -trimpath do (and don’t) help with.
A working operator’s view of what an incident responder finds when they run Volatility on a memory image. The plugins that hunt your beacon (pslist, psscan, malfind, netscan, windows.cmdline), the modern tradecraft that survives them (sleep masking via Ekko/FOLIAGE, module stomping vs phantom DLL hollowing, indirect syscalls), and the 2025-2026 changes that have made some of the old tricks stop working: Credential Guard, HVCI, ETW-based command line capture.
A working operator’s view of pretexting in 2026. Cialdini’s six (plus one) principles applied to actual engagements, building a legend that survives a target’s google check, handling the “let me verify with my manager” pushback, and the modern state of the discipline after Scattered Spider’s MGM/Caesars helpdesk attacks, AI voice cloning, STIR/SHAKEN, and AiTM kits eating MFA fatigue’s lunch.
A working tour of the BC Security Empire fork in 2026. Listeners, stagers, and the four agent types Empire ships today (PowerShell, Python, IronPython, and Sharpire/C#). Plus an honest read on where Empire still earns its keep in 2026, where Sliver and Havoc have eaten its lunch, and what AMSI evasion actually looks like now that Defender has shipped signatures for the obvious bypasses.
A working operator’s look at the layer 2 and layer 3 attacks that actually move an engagement forward: IPv6 shadow networks and mitm6/ntlmrelayx, NAC bypass against modern profiling-aware appliances, DTP and double-tagging VLAN hopping, and HSRP/VRRP gateway hijacking with Loki. Plus the 2024–2026 defender changes (Server 2025 EPA, LDAP channel binding) that have made some of these noisier.
A working primer on static and dynamic PE analysis from the operator’s seat. What an EDR actually sees when your payload lands on disk, why your IAT and entropy and PDB paths are doing most of the talking, and a self-audit loop that catches the obvious tells before the payload ever touches a customer machine.
A working operator’s view of password cracking past rockyou.txt. Building a dedicated GPU rig (and when to burst to cloud), tuning Hashcat for fast and slow hash types, generating context-specific wordlists with CeWL and PRINCE, and writing rules that target how humans actually compose passwords inside an enterprise.
A walk through the modern phishing campaign architecture from an operator’s seat. Domain warming, redirector tiers, ASN and geo cloaking, CAPTCHA gates to defeat sandbox click-time URL scanning, HTML smuggling via the Blob API, SVG smuggling, and homograph tricks. Plus the current state of the arms race in 2026 with AiTM kits like Tycoon and EvilProxy, and what defenders should actually focus on.
A Rails primer for operators who need to assess or exploit a Rails application. Covers the MVC layout that tells you where the bugs live, strong parameters and the permit! footgun, what SECRET_KEY_BASE actually gives you on modern Rails versus the classic Marshal RCE chain on Rails 3, the raw/html_safe XSS surface, IDOR patterns, and the static-analysis tools (Brakeman, bundler-audit) that should be your first pass.
How a stack-based buffer overflow actually corrupts a stack frame, what the classic mitigations (ASLR, DEP/NX, stack canaries) do and how each gets bypassed, why modern Windows and Linux added more layers (CFG, CET shadow stacks, PIE, PAC), and the development workflow for writing a first exploit against an unhardened target. Aimed at operators who’ve used Metasploit but never written an exploit from scratch.
A working operator’s view of red teaming versus pen testing, the Unified Kill Chain as a practical mental model rather than a theoretical framework, how modern C2 infrastructure is actually built (and why domain fronting isn’t the answer anymore), purple teaming as collaborative tuning, deconfliction with the white cell, and the operator-side OPSEC habits that decide whether you finish the engagement quietly.
A working operator’s guide to Metasploit. Covers the module taxonomy, why you actually want the database initialized, staged vs non-staged payloads and when each one matters, Meterpreter’s load-bearing extensions (stdapi, kiwi, incognito, priv), pivoting (autoroute, portfwd, SOCKS), and resource scripts for the listener setup you’d otherwise type a hundred times an engagement.
A working guide to social engineering for red team engagements. Covers Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion as they’re actually used in pretexting, OSINT for building a credible story, Adversary-in-the-Middle phishing against MFA-protected accounts, MFA fatigue, vishing, physical entry, and how to write findings up without throwing individual employees under the bus.
A guide to using Nim for offensive tooling. Covers language fundamentals, the winim WinAPI bindings, compile-time string obfuscation with macros, direct syscall stubs, the offensive Nim ecosystem (OffensiveNim, NimlineWhispers, Nim-RunPE, NimPackt, Nimcrypt2), and an honest take on what edge Nim actually still gives you against modern EDR.
Past nmap -sC -sV — TCP/IP behavior that shapes scan results, NSE for real enumeration, IDS-aware timing, packet-level evasion, and where RustScan and Masscan are actually faster.
Manual UNION-based exfiltration, error-based and blind SQLi, WAF evasion, out-of-band data theft over DNS and HTTP, second-order injection, and the sqlmap flags that matter on real engagements.
A comprehensive deep-dive into the Rust programming language for offensive security. Learn the core concepts of ownership and borrowing, master idiomatic error handling, build a multi-threaded port scanner, and discover how to use “Unsafe Rust” for shellcode injection and high-performance exploit development.
A deep-dive into XSS from an offensive perspective. Beyond alert(1) — cookie theft, weaponized BeEF hooks, blind XSS, and bypassing modern WAFs and CSPs.
An introduction to penetration testing for people getting into the field. The differences between VA, PT, and red teaming; PTES as a workflow; what actually goes into a good report; and the legal lines you can’t cross.
A guide for red team operators coming from Linux. Where Darwin differs from Linux at the userland and kernel level, how SIP and TCC change what root means, how to live off the land with JXA and AppleScript, and how to persist with launchd.
A deep-dive into PsExec for offensive work. How it works under the hood, how to leverage pass-the-hash with Impacket, service-name evasion, and the forensic footprint it leaves so you know when to reach for it and when to reach for something else.
A deep-dive into sc.exe for offensive work. Weaponize the Windows Service Control Manager for remote code execution, persist via service failure actions, exploit weak service ACLs, and load kernel drivers.
A deep-dive into Wmic for offensive work. Interrogate system internals, move laterally, find security software, abuse XSL transforms for code execution, and understand the forensic footprint WMI leaves behind.
A deep-dive into microcode. How it works, why updates aren’t persistent, where the cryptography is (and isn’t) bulletproof, and why microarchitectural attacks like Downfall and Zenbleed keep happening.
A guide to Active Directory reconnaissance with built-in tooling. Discover privileged accounts, identify service accounts, spot unconstrained delegation, and operate when RSAT isn’t installed.
A comprehensive deep-dive into advanced Windows command-line tools. Learn how to leverage modern binaries like curl and tar, abuse legacy tools for download and execution, and perform stealthy data theft and persistence without triggering alerts.
A practical walkthrough of Chisel for tunneling — reverse SOCKS, port forwarding, TLS hardening with a real cert, source-level evasion tweaks, and how it compares to Ligolo-ng.
How Pass-the-Hash actually works against RDP — what makes it normally fail, why Restricted Admin Mode flips that around, the correct xfreerdp syntax, RDP-over-SOCKS tuning, and the Logon Type 3 anomaly that gives the technique away.
A working guide to network tunneling for offensive ops — iptables NAT, every flavor of SSH forwarding (including reverse SOCKS and ProxyJump), Windows netsh portproxy, socat, and the modern compiled tools that have largely replaced everything else (Chisel and Ligolo-ng).
A red team walkthrough of Impacket’s mssqlclient.py — discovery, every common auth method, RCE via xp_cmdshell / OLE Automation / CLR, hash capture via xp_dirtree, linked-server hops, file transfer over TDS, and finding the data that actually matters.
A walkthrough of Impacket’s SMB tooling for offensive work — smbclient.py, smbserver.py, secretsdump.py, and ntlmrelayx.py. Covers Pass-the-Hash, hash capture via UNC paths, DCSync, and cross-protocol NTLM relay.
A long walkthrough of smbclient for offensive work — SMB dialects, enumeration, bulk exfiltration, Pass-the-Ticket via Kerberos, opsec around credentials, and what the blue team sees when you connect.
A long-form Ruby walkthrough for security folks. Covers syntax, the object model, blocks and metaprogramming, networking, FFI, and writing Metasploit modules.
Master the art of flight without leaving a footprint. A comprehensive guide to disabling shell history, managing operational hygiene, and understanding the forensic limit of these techniques across Bash, Zsh, Fish, and PowerShell on Linux.
This article explores how Red Team members can use alternate data streams on Windows NTFS to hide data, with specific examples and cautionary considerations.
A comprehensive guide to installing and mastering Impacket, covering installation via pipx, deep dives into core tools, and advanced authentication attacks.