Cyberbits

  • Redteam lab updates

    Introduction Eight or nine weeks ago I built the red team lab on my Mac: one make up, a Kali attacker, two targets, an isolated 10.10.10.0/24. It worked, and then it did what every working lab does: it grew. This post is the catch-up. Same repo, same one command, five targets instead of two, and…

  • Fuzzers

    Introduction Plenty of TryHackMe rooms have a task like “find the hidden login page,” and the answer is the same ritual every time: throw a wordlist of paths at the web server and see what sticks. I had been switching tools based on whatever the room walkthrough used, so I sat down to pick a…

  • Passing TryHackMe SEC1

    Introduction TryHackMe’s Cyber Security 101 (SEC1) is the platform’s foundational certificate; the step up from the SEC0 (Pre Security) path. One learning path, six domains, covering both sides of the fence: operating system skills, network traffic analysis, web application security, security operations, password attacks, and malware analysis fundamentals. The exam is scenario-based and fully hands-on,…

  • THM The Hollow Shell

    Introduction The Hollow Shell is another resort-themed box from TryHackMe’s Hacker Holidays run, and this one lives entirely in a zip file. Upload the wrong kind of archive to a “shell delivery” service and the server will happily write your files anywhere on disk it can reach. That’s Zip Slip, and this room chains it…

  • 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…