research blog

Threat hunting.
The most sophisticated actors.

Technical research across DFIR, malware analysis, threat hunting, and CTF write-ups. No product pitches, no fluff.

Cross-Domain Identity Attacks: MFA Bypass, Help Desk Social Engineering, and Adversary-in-the-Middle
Vishing attacks increased 442% in the second half of 2024. SCATTERED SPIDER built an entire operation around calling help desks and impersonating employees to reset MFA. AiTM phishing steals session tokens after MFA completes. This covers how each technique works and how to detect them.
Living Off the Land at Scale: Hunting Attackers Who Blend Into Your Own Tools
81% of interactive intrusions in 2025 involved no malware. Attackers use your own administrative tools against you. Detecting this requires knowing what normal looks like well enough to spot the subtle differences. This is how to build that detection.
DCSync and DCShadow: Owning Active Directory Without Touching a DC
DCSync replicates every credential in Active Directory without logging on to a domain controller. DCShadow goes further -- it creates a rogue DC and injects objects into AD. Both techniques have specific detection signatures that most environments are not watching for.
Kerberoasting and Its Modern Variants: Why Classic Detection Still Misses Half the Attacks
Classic Kerberoasting detection looks for RC4 TGS requests. Attackers switched to AES years ago. Targeted Kerberoasting, roasting with machine accounts, and AS-REP roasting all have different signatures. This covers all variants and how to hunt each one.
BYOVD: Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver — Killing EDR at the Kernel Level
Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver is now standard ransomware tradecraft. The attacker loads a legitimate but vulnerable signed driver, uses it to gain kernel execution, and kills your EDR before you know they are there. This is how to hunt for it.
Credential Dumping from LSASS: What the Logs Actually Show
Most guides on LSASS credential dumping focus on the attacker side. This one focuses on what you actually see in the event logs when it happens in your environment.
Getting Started with Zeek for Network Threat Hunting
Zeek is one of those tools that looks overwhelming at first. After a few weeks of using it in a lab environment, here is how I actually got it to a useful state.
Lockpick 3.0 | HTB Forensics (Hard)
A ransomware decryption challenge where the encryption scheme looks custom at first but turns out to be a misused AES implementation.
Writing Sigma Rules That Actually Work
A week of trialling Sigma rules against a real lab environment. A lot of public rules are too noisy to be useful without tuning.
EDR Blind Spots: Where Modern Endpoint Tools Fall Short
Testing common EDR bypass techniques in a sandboxed environment to understand where defenders have coverage gaps.