dade :: Musings of a malicious musical misfit

Ever Moving Goal Posts :: dade

It’s coming up on 10 years since I started working in tech. Maybe closer to 15 if we count the years of web development work that mostly involved moving content between CMS platforms at my univerity, doing computer repa…

What the heck is Winget :: dade

I saw a tweet recently about winget as a windows package manager and I had to try it out. I’d never used it before, never installed anything with it, so surely it wasn’t going to be particularly useful for me, right? Ri…

From Red Team to SecEng :: dade

Editor’s Note: I wrote this in July of 2021 but forgot to publish it. It’s July of 2022, so I’m going to make it public without any edits. I’ll write another post about my longer term experiences with this transition. I…

The Purpose Driven Red Team :: dade

A topic of refrain in the red team community, particularly in the internal red team community of which I am a part, is that of red team success. What makes a red team successful? How do we signal that success to leaders…

Scenario-Driven Interviews :: dade

Interviewing for tech jobs is miserable. You do a phone screen and things go well and then you do a 5 or 6 hour interview loop which usually looks a little something like this: Tell us about a time someone hurt your fee…

ForwardAgentForward :: dade

This is a story all about how my auth got flipped, turned inside out. I love SSH. No really, SSH is awesome. I remember first learning how to do cool SSH things from Hak5 videos in 2012. Then I got intimate with the man…

authorized_keys File Format :: dade

The second in my series of posts about SSH things that people don’t always think about, today we’ll take a look at the authorized_keys file format. That’s right, it’s a whole file format. Not just a place you drop your …

Controlling Your Calendar :: dade

I see a lot of people, both in my day job and on social media, complaining about how many meetings they have and how they are so exhausted by it. Comments like “I never have time to get any work done anymore,” and “That…

Rethinking Security Organizations :: dade

With today’s news about Mudge joining Twitter as the head of security and reporting directly to Jack, it sparked memories of thoughts I’d nearly forgotten. That is, thoughts about how the current security organization m…

MTBF As a Security Metric :: dade

Editor’s Note: Per Nicole Forsgren, by way of Kelly Shortridge, MTBF may result in perverse incentives that optimize minimizing time between failure by focusing entirely on preventing failures, an ultimately futile exer…

Red Team PROXY Protocol (Nginx) :: dade

It was recently in my best interest to learn how to make use of the PROXY protocol in support of red team infrastructure. If you’re familiar with developing scalable systems or using load balancers then you may be well …

Nginx for Red Teams :: dade

After my post yesterday about using PROXY protocol for red teams to enable trustless TLS redirectors without losing client information, I wanted to write a short follow up post to talk about how great nginx is. I used a…

On Decentralizing Content :: dade

I am tired of only ever writing on the bird hell site and then losing the few good thoughts that do ooze out of me in a sea of my own bullshit. I miss the days of my first website. No, not Microsoft Frontpage, or the us…

Grass Roots Security Awareness :: dade

As a company grows, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes important to ensure that everyone in the company is aware of security concerns that your company may face. Historically, this has largely involved the cre…

Building a Hidden Service From Scratch :: dade

This guide seeks to provide a guide to setting up a Tor hidden service with a moderate-to-high level of safety. It was compiled on, and was accurate as of, 2019-11-19. While browsing the dark web, as one is to do on occ…

Speaking :: dade

dade has spoken primarily on red team topics at security conferences, but is also interested in expanding into talks on cross-functional security disciplines, security engineering as a business enabler, resilience as a …

Privacy Policy :: dade

Calling this a privacy policy might be a stretch, and a lawyer might have a hernia if they saw it. But I felt it important to share with you what information is collected about you and how it is used. TL;DR I don’t want…

Music :: dade

Streaming Spotify Youtube Music Apple Music Soundcloud Plus wherever else music is streamed. Past Performances DEFCON 34 Chillout Lounge - Guest Performance Arcade Party, DEFCON 34, Las Vegas Convention Center Blue Team…

Digital Garden :: dade

This represents my attempt at a digital garden. Items in this section are sorted by when they were last modified, rather than the date they were published. The idea is that writing here breaks the chronological mold and…

Colophon :: dade

Static Site Generator This site was built with Hugo. Version: v0.161.1-+extended. It was last built at 2026-08-12T21:44:30Z from commit 59b9816. Theme This site began with the hello-friend-ng Hugo theme. Rather than ins…

Blogs :: dade

About dade :: dade

Dade has a degree in Business / Computer Information Systems, and then another degree in computer science (sorta) with a minor in economics. Throughout college, dade worked in web development and worked with Intel on au…

dade :: Musings of a malicious musical misfit

Musings of a malicious musical misfit