Cyberbits

  • THM Do Not Disturb

    Introduction TryHackMe’s Do Not Disturb box chains five small vulnerabilities into one root shell: a NoSQL bypass into a staff console, a template injection field that runs code, a stray debug port, and a forgotten group membership that hands over the disk. Once again, this was a tough one for a beginning pentester. But it…

  • THM Beach Bar

    Introduction I’ve been working through TryHackMe’s Hacker Holidays 2026 event, a free 14-day run of rooms set in a five-star resort with a zero-star security posture. Beach Bar, a beginner Linux box, chains three real production mistakes: exposed credentials, remote code execution through unsafe YAML deserialization, and a root password sitting in plain sight. This…

  • The OSI and TCP/IP model

    Introduction Now this might seem a bit random, but I’ve always been intrigued by both, the OSI model especially. It really was the first thing I ever learned about networking, more than 25 years ago. I’ve been very busy the last weeks with work, Hacker Holidays, a couple of my own projects, etc. I’ve been…

  • Anonymous Kali setup on Mac

    Introduction Last week we setup a single Kali box as a daily driver. As promised, this week we take it a step further. The lab I built in July hands me an attacker box and two targets on an isolated segment, rebuilt from scratch with one command. Every VM in it still reaches the internet…

  • Single Kali VM on Apple Silicon

    Introduction A few weeks back I built a throwaway lab: an attacker box and a couple of disposable targets, all from a make up. That solved the targets problem, but I wanted more for the Kali box itself. So I gave it the same treatment: one repo, one command, a Kali workstation I can burn…

  • Metasploit EternalBlue, Hearthbleed, i.e.

    Introduction A while back I wrote a beginner Metasploit post where I popped a Metasploitable box. Since then I’ve kept poking at things, and a few features finally clicked. So here’s a more intermediate follow-up; two classic exploits, the shell upgrade trick I now use and the post-exploitation moves that make the framework feel like…

  • Automated lab setup on a Mac

    Introduction Last time I built a single Kali workstation on the Mac by hand: install the VM, update it, duplicate it, keep the clone clean. That’s fine when you need one attacker box. It stops being fine the moment you want a target to point it at, and then a second target, and then a…

  • Attacker workstation on a Mac

    Introduction I run my daily work off a MacBook, and for a while I told myself I could install nmap and a handful of tools straight onto macOS with Homebrew and call it a day. That works until the first time you run something you don’t fully understand yet against a target, on the same…

  • Passing the CompTIA Security+ exam

    Introduction After a couple of weeks of studying, which I covered in the last few posts, I passed CompTIA Security+ last June (I schedule my posts, so dates don’t line up). Going by exam day alone, I’m not sure how. Checking in About a decade ago, I studied for quite a few CompTIA exams, and…

  • Security+ Governance, Risk, and Compliance

    Introduction Last in this series! As you know by now, I’ve been working through the CompTIA Security+ curriculum these last few weeks. It has a lot of overlap with the Google Cybersecurity series I did earlier this year, but it’s all interesting interesting nevertheless. Here’s what module 4 (Cybersecurity Governance and Compliance) covers, distilled into…