Things I build, break, fix, and write about

5 November 2026
Embedded payloads in trojanised PDF viewers

Modified PDF viewers are a neat little delivery trick because they look like ordinary job bait until someone opens them. I keep coming back to the same point, the file name is not the danger, the loader path is; that is where the unwanted code slips in.

5 November 2026
Ransomware group fragmentation and detection priorities

Ransomware group fragmentation means the label matters less than the behaviour, and I trust activity over reputation every time. A small crew with...

5 November 2026
Security Advisory – 05 Nov 2026

Daily security advisory summary for 05 Nov 2026

4 November 2026
Linux kernel net/sched UAF constraints on CentOS 9 desktop

Linux kernel net/sched use-after-free looks messy on paper, and on CentOS 9 Desktop it is worse, because the obvious paths are blocked and the useful...

Latest blog posts you might like

7 July 2026
Tracing acme.sh certificate handling in TLS interception

I spent too long chasing the neat version of TLS wiretapping reconstruction, then found the mess: shell parsing, token limits, and renewal timing. The interesting bit is not the packet capture, it is...

7 July 2026
Reverse engineering game binaries with static analysis

Game binaries give up more than they should, if you know where to look. I start with binary analysis, not the folklore around the game, then use strings, imports, and control flow to separate real...

6 July 2026
Agentic AI still needs domain judgement

Agentic AI can write the thing, but it still cannot tell you whether the thing is right. That is where domain expertise matters, because a clean config or neat bit of glue logic can still be wrong in...

6 July 2026
Weekly Tech Digest | 06 Jul 2026

Stay updated with the latest in tech! This digest covers AI ethics, auto industry shifts, and the impact of politics on technology, exploring today's pressing issues.

6 July 2026
wolfCOSE zero-allocation parsing in embedded C

wolfCOSE looks sensible only if you care about what your firmware actually has to carry. I like that, because on small targets the wrong crypto feature can cost more than the message itself, and there...

5 July 2026
Layout trade-offs in Design Engineering Magazine

Design Engineering Magazine only works if the structure holds under real reading, not just in a tidy mock-up. I care less about pretty grids than about whether the archive, type and page weight stay...

5 July 2026
Keeping smart bulbs powered with Zigbee wall switch

Zigbee wall switch controllers fix the bit people keep getting wrong, the wall still feels normal, but it stops murdering smart bulbs. I prefer that to rewiring a room just to keep the lights alive;...

4 July 2026
Home Assistant Matter alarms for local CO alerts

Home Assistant Matter alarms are only worth bothering with if they still behave properly when the mesh sulks or the border router falls over. I prefer that sort of boring reliability, because a CO...

4 July 2026
Chunked range reads with etcd RangeStream

etcd RangeStream is one of those changes that sounds minor until you watch a large read stop clogging memory on both ends of the RPC. I like it because it replaces one ugly pause with a series of...

3 July 2026
Why Kubernetes CVE records still flag unfixed issues

Kubernetes CVE records can say “fixed” when nothing was actually fixed, and scanners will believe them. I have seen that sort of paperwork mistake turn into quiet false negatives, then loud surprises...