Cybersecurity: Keyloggers

Recently I got hold of a new device for my homelab, namely a keylogger, which I picked up last month. While the purchase experience was not super smooth, it redeemed itself once I got to testing it out in my lab environment at home.

First I bought a regular USB-only model from Amazon, which works like a USB-cord extender. It is an anonymously looking black USB device with a receptacle to plug configuration.

It immediately powers on when it is connected to the computer and it captures the keystrokes from the keyboard attached to it. It saves the data to a file on the USB and it can store a certain amount of data. To access the logfile you press the secret key combination KBS for a little while, this makes the storage visible in the explorer.

Sometimes things doesn't turn out the way you want and it seemed like the vendor sent me the 16 mb version instead of the 16 gb version, so I returned it.

But I still wanted to add this type of device to my toolbox, so I got an AirDrive Keylogger Pro instead. The difference is basically that you can connect to it with wifi.

This means that it sits between my keyboard and my computer, but it also generates a wifi network. If I connect to the network and browse to a certain IP address I can start configure the device, such as changing wifi name, password, read the log and even set up an email service.

However, I have not tried the email function yet, but the wifi function worked really well. In the future I will test it together with my tablet or phone or something as well I think and see what it can pick up, and also run Zenmap against it, to see what ports are showing up.

All in all, it is a fun device, but it is important that you use it responsibly and only in your own lab environment. A physical keylogger such as the ones in this article, are not really detected by the system, but you instead notice them if you follow the cable to the computer, or if you notice a strange public wifi, that shouldn't be there.

Fiction: The Guest, a short story

The Guest🏠

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2026-09-16

As many other days I woke up a bit before 07:00 to make the daily commute to the office. I would bring breakfast to the office and chat a bit with my colleagues before the day would start. Working in the economy department meant that I could work remotely as well, which I did on Fridays.

But today was just Tuesday and the weekend seemed far off, so to cheer myself up I set up a date with myself in one of the local cafés after the day was over. Reminding myself of the special latte that they made there kept me going through another day of reports and taxes.

Yesterday a new colleague had joined our company, a tall man perhaps in his 50’s. So in the kitchen one could still see some leftover cake. Unfortunately I had to pass on it as I counted my calories and saved them for my treat later.

The day at the office neared its end and a few souls were still haunting the corridors as I grabbed my coat and headed out in the autumn rain. On the way out of the office I nearly bumped into someone, a hasty “sorry” escaped my lips as I struggled with the umbrella. A short walk later I found myself in my favorite corner of the café.

Being an natural introvert I sat down so that I could have my back against the wall and overlook the sea of tables in front of me. It was pretty crowded and I could feel a scent of oranges from the perfume that was hanging in the air from the guy behind me in the queue. Seeing as it was late afternoon there were many people sitting there already. An older couple, a few students sitting by themselves clicking away on their phones, a few people dressed in their best business clothes and the long trailing line of people hadn’t gotten much shorter since I picked up my cinnamon spiced latte. The guy behind me in the line had found a table next to the other wall and was fidgeting with his phone and a mother with her young child sat down a few tables to my left and started rummaging through her bag for something.

After having put down my bag and jacket to my side, I pulled up a book I was reading and took a sip of my warm drink. I felt at ease at once, a wave of comfort spread throughout my body and I flipped up my book and started reading.

I had just flipped the page for the third time when something interrupted my focus, it was the sound of my phone, it was still on low volume after having been at the office.
At first I didn’t know if I should pick it up or not due to the background noise, but seeing as it was a number I didn’t recognize I decided to answer, so I lifted the phone to my ear and greeted the caller with a neutral “hello, this is Ovinia Tinton”.

At first it sounded like there was an error on the line, a sharp sound, then I heard a faint echo of myself. But there was no answer from the other side. I looked at the phone to make sure the call was still connected, which it was. I said “hello” a final time before I decided to hang up, and the warm feeling I had before was now replaced with an unease so strong that my breath got shallower and more rapid. I could just feel that something was off, somehow.

Returning to my book I tried to focus on the story and forget about the strange call, but I just couldn’t. My mind constantly wandered off to the call, who it might be and what they wanted. I reread the same sentence on and on, but eventually I had enough and shut the book closed.

I glanced at my phone and now there was a text message waiting for me, and a feeling of anxiety overwhelmed me, to the point of almost feeling sick. Against my better judgment I opened the message which read “You have been chosen”. I stared at the message for a while, before confirming whether it was the same number that had called me.

This made no sense to me and I slowly felt the panic set in. “Why me?” I wondered to myself.

As I got up and walked out of the café I left a half-finished latte and brought with me a sense of impending doom instead. I felt like I was in a bubble and the noisy guests were outside that bubble somehow, the mother playing with her child almost appeared in slow-motion before me, the students faces blurred out but the man that had sat close to me was no longer there, there was just two small puddles of rain water in the shape of footprints under the table he had been sitting.

It was not until I was out on the street again that I added two and two together, “could it really have been him?” I whispered to myself as I stared off along the line of cars waiting for a green light and at the end of the line I saw my bus taking off from the stop.

I looked at my phone and saw that it was getting late so I walked over to the bus stop and waited. Illuminated by a street lamp and to the drops of rain drumming a gentle beat on my umbrella I finally let my mind blank out a bit and I felt my heart rate slow down. My senses came to, the light reflecting on the wet pavement, the engines of cars trundling by. A fresh scent hovering in the air, something citrusy and was it… basil? I smiled as it reminded me of something. Shortly thereafter the next bus arrived and I spent an uneventful couple of minutes as it brought me to my district.

It had stopped raining as I left the bus, the trees stood as silent observers around the stop. The wind that rustled their dying branches embraced me for a moment and I couldn’t wait to just get home and forget about everything. The final stretch of my journey had never felt so long as it did today but eventually I was getting close to my apartment, I grabbed my keys from my purse and carried them in my hand until I reached the heavy wooden door. Little did I know that my keys, a symbol of safety, was also the agent of my demise.

Because when I stepped through the door to my apartment it didn’t take long before something felt off. Although I couldn’t locate the source of this feeling, it dawned on me after a while. The realization came to me after a moment’s confusion, much like when the breeze suddenly takes a break only to return a moment later.

There were no shoeprints, no items were misplaced, but it was a simple smell. A fragrance that felt so familiar, as if I had felt it a thousand times by now. But what was it doing here?

OSINT: Gathering pieces of the puzzle

OSINT: Gathering pieces of the puzzle

In this article you will learn about what OSINT is, what it can be used for and some examples of the data that you can use for your research. I am also bringing up a real-life example where I used OSINT to geolocate a fire.

What is OSINT?

One aspect of cybersecurity is OSINT (open-source intelligence). It can briefly be described as the usage of sources that are publicly available, either free or paid, in order to produce intelligence. Intelligence can come from information (which is unprocessed) or knowledge (which is processed and more actionable). Things that are learned from this type of research supports decision makers, business owners, governments and civilians.

It is also worth mentioning that if you engage in OSINT you need to consider the data that you gather and whether it is truthful or not, it can even be purposefully disinformative. You also need to have an understanding if your findings or your methods can have legal consequences. There is also a technical perspective to it, make sure that the programs and the websites that you use can be trusted.

You can read more about intelligence and OSINT here on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_(information)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence

Why engage in OSINT gathering?

Before we dive into the methodology and mindset, we will discuss the reasons and relevance behind gathering this type of intelligence and how it can be connected to cybersecurity.

One argument is that it is easily available for many researchers, the bar is low and you can get started with your research easily. There are sources that a regular civilian does not have access to, such as classified information, satellite data and military resources.

Another point of view is the cost. You can with relative ease get hold of data, information and knowledge from sources that offers it for free, but sometimes there are premium functions that you have to pay for, such as access to archived logs.

Lastly, there is a community with which you can share ideas, tools and methods with. Sometimes it is the people themselves that are the greatest resource, someone might recognize a symbol or know a specific dialect for example.

Just keep in mind that OSINT tools, as with any other tools, can be incorrect at times or they can be removed from where they are hosted, if you don't build research tools of your own or document your findings, you will be reliant on a third party.

OSINT is an important part of reconnaissance for both security testers, intelligence agencies and private individuals who wants to know more about the world. Someone investigating a security breach might find clues that they want to know more about, someone who is planning to test the security of a client might want to see what attack vectors there are. An attack vector is a specific path/method to gain unauthorized access.

From which sources can you gather intelligence?

To some degree it is your imagination that sets the limit to all the classes of information that you can gather. Essentially every bit of information and tiny bit of data could tell you something and help you build the overall picture. At some point however, you have to make a judgment of what contributes to your case, what is within scope, how easy the data is to work with and if it is worth the effort. The more you know the better, but sometimes your time is worth more if it invested into other ventures, that is where you draw the line.

Let’s dive into the types of information that you can gather with a handful of examples to get your inspiration going.

• An audio recording can contain background sounds that might be of interest beyond the intended content. In the background you might hear a public broadcast, a radio station, sounds from public transport that can be geolocated, languages/accents, construction sites and so on.
  
  
• Video recordings potentially contain the same information as an audio recording, but you can also gather information about the location in the video itself. Keep an eye out for street signs, advertising, stores and restaurants, famous buildings and even skylines.
  
  
• Images contain the similar visual information as a video might contain. You can for example get a pretty clear idea of where a picture is taken if you can go on to a map service and match the skylines on the map with that on the picture. There are also map tools that let’s you look at buildings from the street level. You can use apps that shows how shadows fall depending on the position of the sun which gives you a rough estimate of what time the photo was taken.
  
  
• If you have access to the original file, you can also come across metadata, such as location, usernames, time of creation and edit.
  
  
• Other popular tools are those that show airlines, trains, cars and marine vessels. From an OSINT point of view this can help you pinpoint timelines and locations as well, for example if a vehicle is seen in a picture.

Intelligence gathering in practice

Some time ago I read the news about a fire in an industrial building where they produce chemicals. Given the geopolitical situation and the close proximity to my city I decided to figure out which factory it was that had caught fire. The news didn't reveal any names or exact locations, but there were a general area and a blurry picture. 

The picture showed a building that was partially on fire and the neighboring industrial area, in the background a building stood out with a neon sign, where a slogan was partially visible.

By combining the slogan and the general district in my default search engine I managed to locate the neighboring company. From that information I could extract an exact address and look it up in a 3D map. I matched the 3D map (at the correct angle) with the image from the news and could then find the address of the burning chemical factory.

With the exact address of the fire, I could now find the name of the company and conclude my research.

Summary

This article explained how various sources of information combined with each other can lead to conclusions and insights.

You can use typical tools in non-typical ways to assist you in your work of finding information and sometimes there is more information than first meets the eye. You can refine a regular file into valuable knowledge in your research. Whether you are testing the security of a company, planning a trip or looking over your own public profile, OSINT is a nice skill to have.

Fiction: The Divergent, a short story

The Divergent⌛

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2026-06-01

Midnight had long since passed when the two figures passed by the alley.

A city is a living organism and the pulse had slowed down after the break of night. Cars and people that makes up the artificial bloodstream had vanished like every other night in the city.

It took only a few seconds before the two silhouettes came back after having seen something strange further down the road and instead made the unwise decision to take a shortcut through the alley in order to reach the subway faster.

Huron Yetao and Thema Reno had just performed a mission as contractors for The Time Council, in which they had been tasked with an assassination. The time council usually avoids interfering with the timeline directly, as they believe the unaltered timeline is the most pure and correct. So, when the order had reached them, they could at first not believe the mission or who the target was.

Further into the alley, a slumped-up shadow in a filthy doorway barely caught the attention of the two agents who were visibly agitated and walking rapidly to the other end.

Joanney Sutton was used to be unseen by fellow people, to the two people jogging past he was no one, but even a nobody can become a somebody, those who are not seen are sometimes the ones that see the most.

The two agents hadn't made it very far when yet another person stepped into the alley from the other end. A metallic sound, the familiar noise of a slide being racked on a gun was heard coming from the other end of the alley. The hooded figure aimed at the two agents and fired several shots in rapid succession. Debris fell from the concrete wall and landed on Joanney, who froze from the shock and surprise. Seeing both Thema and Huron being immobilized on the ground the assassin retreated out of the alley and into the street.

For a moment everything was quiet. It had all happened so fast, but Joanney came to and brushed the concrete crumbles out of his hair and from his clothes. After a few seconds a coughing was heard from one of the agents. It was Thema who tried to get up, failed and fell back to the ground with a loud splutter.

Joanney who was just mere meters away, crawled out of the shallow doorway and over to the pair. Thema turned her head to him and with eyes that pleaded, she spoke "my watch, take it, stop them" with her final words, as her body gave up and became one with the ground. Had he been anyone else then he might have ran off in fear, but something about the way she spoke her last words made him act.

Her wrist was still warm as he pried the strange wristwatch off from her arm. A green and blue light was dimly lighting up his face as he held it up. The assassin was gone and so were the agents, so he quickly decided to go back the way the agents had come from.

He rounded the corner as he came out to the street, on the other side was an empty parking lot and a few dark corners to hide in. Joanney stealthily made it over to one of the hiding spots and looked closer at the watch. It had a few buttons, one of which was labelled "home". The watch face displayed a set of coordinates and unlike a regular wristwatch it displayed not just hours, minutes and seconds, but also the year and another number he couldn't figure out the meaning off. The backside of the watch was engraved with TTC and the initials T.R.

Having no place to call home since the incident, he pressed the home button in curiosity.

The display changed to a black screen, and strange code in green now covered the monitor.

"Confirming user... status... failed"
"Confirming timeline ID.... success"
"Checking vitals... success"
"Wielder will be temporally relocated in 10 seconds"

It had managed to count to seven before Joanney reacted, hastily strapping the wristwatch to his arm, in all his hurry he even managed to put it on the wrong way, leaving the watch face upside down.

Being transported in spacetime is an unpleasant feeling, not because it feels strange, but because you don't feel it.

As both the waves of light and the molecules touching you are affected, your mind simply cannot comprehend the experience.

For him it was no different, when he arrived all the senses returned at the same time, just as light returns after a blackout, leaving him disorientated.

He arrived, suffering from acute time travel sickness, but he was in relatively good shape.

Looking around himself, he noticed that he was in what almost looked like a reception area of an office.

Two receptionists looked over at him from a desk, almost apathetically, as if they barely registered his arrival. Then they continued with the paperwork that they had in front of them.

He sat down on a bench, fiddling with the device which display now had returned to normal. The coordinates had changed and so had the time, not only was he not in the same time zone, he was in a completely different timeline now.
An hour went by when one of the large doors on the side opened up and a man in a suit walked out, locking his eyes onto Joanney.

The suit didn’t present himself, just said “come with me, we know everything”.
Joanney who was still dazed from his first journey through time didn’t put up a fight and just played along. They walked through the same door that the man had arrived from and continued through a long corridor. Judging by the sound of their footsteps and the structure of the bright walls, they were in a corridor made of cheap metal.

He looked around as they continued on and noticed a woman with short red hair who was packing a bag inside of a room. Their eyes met and there was something familiar with her face and she looked at him and her facial expression revealed a similar instinct.

They turned around a corner and arrived in a room. He didn’t have time to connect the dots before the suit finally spoke again. “I know you witnessed something you shouldn’t have. I am going to make the choice simple for you. Either you cooperate with us or you will expire here today.”

Intimidated Joanney spoke hesitantly, “what do you need me to do exactly?” and shifted uncomfortably.

“I need you to finish the job next time, one of the agents survived the ambush, your ambush”, said the suit calmly but with a voice that commanded respect.

“Wait, that was me?” Joanney replied confused and shocked, “how is that possible?”

“The timeline is broken thanks to the three of you and this is the way to set it straight again. The council does not approve of any divergence. You will be provided with the equipment that you will need and you leave shortly again. In the meantime, make peace with yourself.” The suit ended the discussion and left the room.

Half a minute later Joanney stood with his back against the door, still confused about the past conversation, when he heard a faint voice.

“Hello Joanney”, spoke the voice from the door. He turned around and saw the red-haired woman from earlier. “I believe you have my watch”, she said with a voice that hid sadness not nearly well enough. It was at that moment he recognized her eyes. She was one of the agents. She knew that he knew and cut him off before the words had even left his mouth.

“I know what he asked of you. I am here to ask the same. Listen, the integrity of the timeline is more important than our lives, your life. I know he wants us dead, but if you save us, you will break the timeline. You don’t have much time, you must choose quickly, I need to leave before they see me talk to you”, and as fast as she said it, she had already turned around and started going back to her room.

He knew better than to call out for her, instead the tall figure of the man in the suit stood in the opening to the room a while later. “You are ready, it is time”, he said imperatively.
He helped Joanney enter the spacetime coordinates into the device and as he looked the man into the eyes the man had already pressed the activation button.

It would have been a lie to say that he was prepared this time around, even the most experienced time travelers never fully get used to it, but it was done, he was once again in the neighborhood where it had started. The dark parking lot looked the same.

Down one end of the street he saw two figures sneaking around in the darkness, “Huron and Thema”, he whispered to himself. Turning to the other end of the street he a saw the hooded figure waiting under a streetlight. Dressed just like himself.

Joanney knew he had to make it into the alley before the others, so he dashed across the street from the parking lot. He peaked out and saw the hooded figure disappear around a corner in his attempt to ambush the agents. Joanney hurried to the safety of the doorway.

Once again something startled the two agents, who broke away from their intended path and headed towards the alley as well.

He hunkered down in the place where he first had witnessed the attack, but this time he was armed. The observer was now a participant in a game greater than he himself could understand at this point, but he had made his decision. Whether it was made on false premises or not, he knew what he had to do.

Hiding in the darkness of the doorway he aimed the gun at the end of the alley and waited.

Fiction: The Reunion, a short story

The Reunion 📡

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2026-05-22

In pitch perfect silence the vessel cut through the vast darkness.

It left no ripples behind. The stars made almost no reflections upon the hull and the eyes that once had seen its creation had since long been closed forever.

Had it not been for the marking on one of the wings, then the name would also have been forgotten.

It was a generational spaceship, assumed to be the last of its kind. Where the crew was born, where they lived and where they died.

Every person onboard had their allotted number of resources. There was an equilibrium of sorts were nothing went to waste and everything was recycled somehow.

The food was distributed through a simple algorithm, invented before anyone currently living in the ship had been born. They sometimes referred to that era as the old days.

In the evenings the older generations would tell the young ones stories of the old days, as their predecessors in turn had told them the stories throughout the millennia.

One of the most popular stories spoke of a red planet. With dense forests in which the flora reached high, gatherings of clear water, tall mountains and large deserts with caves.

The young ones would look at the person telling this origin story as if they were enthralled. They had heard it a hundred times by now, knew it by heart even, and who knows how many times the story had been repeated.

Everyone knew the end of the story, for it was also the beginning. It carried a grave message. The destruction of the planet, weapons that generated the energy of a small star, the lingering radiation and the end of all that was good. Trees being atomized, lakes turned to steam and later into pure plasma and volcanic stones covering the surface. The once colorful dot in space was now a quiet graveyard with few traces of civilisation, as desolate as its celestial neighbors.

This extinction event did not put a full stop to civilisation, but it marked a new beginning for the select few that boarded the last of two ships that had managed to escape the planet. The first ship boarded was destined for a nearby planet, but for a long time it was believed to have been lost when communication ceased. The second ship took their chances in other regions of space, in search for a habitable planet.

Months without communication passed at first, then the years and eventually generations. A few attempts had been made to send out scouts. Vehicles harnessing the power of light made desperate patrols as long as the fuel lasted, but they always returned unsuccessful, if they returned at all.

Countless generations had passed when strange signals first reached the remaining generational ship. Electromagnetic waves, both long and short, barely noticeable at first. Rhythmic and to some degree resembling a pattern.

A few generations later a strange object had been caught by the advanced sensors. What looked like an unmanned spaceship was traveling through space and a golden disk that it carried was brought aboard after the vehicle was slowed down using a spacetime reverser. The crew aboard the ship knew they had found the traces of the descendants of the lost twin ship.

It was only some time later that the dark ship carved an elliptic path towards the blue, green and white planet. The resources would finally let them be free from their casket. They had also learned to decode the electromagnetic signals over the years. A simple, almost barbaric, method of communication but it was clear that they communicated with the ship now.

After simple decoding, enhancement and translation, the message simply read "Welcome to Earth".

Fiction: The Visitor, a short story

The Visitor

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2026-05-10

In the cosmic scale of things, a thousand years is nothing.

For mortals it is an eternity, a lifetime.

This universal fact had never been clearer to Eolia Nemertinth.

She stood before the council, accused of interfering with the cosmic order when she had refused to carry out adjustments of the official timeline, changes that she didn't believe in and was opposed to.

Working for the council normally meant avoiding interfering with the timelines and the human world. Though something had made the eldest members worried and they foresaw a future that they could not allow.

Eolia, being the perfect entity to carry out the mission, had flat out refused. Much to the anger of the council members.

For this disobedience she was sentenced to 50 years of mortality, to live a life amongst the people she so adamantly had defended, against her own superiors. They wanted to teach her a lesson while showing her the nature of mankind and why they once had sought the actions that they had needed her for.

After a brief hearing amongst the stars and interplanetary dust clouds they sent her essence to earth.

Nine months later she was born as a human baby somewhere in a big city.

The formative years were not easy, the human parents struggled to give her the essentials. Salaries were low, the costs of living seemed ever rising and society offered little help. Despite this they worked hard and did their best for young Eolia.

The school years that followed were shaped by the stress to perform, a feeling of being different from other children and the worship of obedience, as the teachers and adults demanded attention and the following of rules for the sake of following them.

Eventually Eolia entered the workforce and to her it seemed much like the previous years of school, manmade order and control held a higher standing than the principles of goodness. She saw abuse of power, wages being cut and the worst sides of people coming out. She would read news and get glimpses of videos depicting atrocities and misfortunes around the world. At this time she never felt more alone and she wondered why she was there, why the world looked like it did. While she had no clear memory of what came before, there was still a subtle echo that never left her. A feeling that she was not of this place and that she would leave one day again.

And as she left the middle age years, living decades among people had taken the best parts of her spirit and made her dull to the aches of the world. She had seen too much, experienced too much. Her human parents had since long passed on to their next destination and she was left alone in the world.

Some month after her 50:th birthday she stopped showing up at work, it took days before anyone came looking for her and they found her sitting peacefully in her favorite armchair. For the mortals her story was over, but for her this was a brief chapter in an eternal corpus. She had gone home and repented.

Having returned to her part of the universe, she once again found herself in familiar surroundings and she was brought before the council again, who in their high seats looked down upon the homecomer.

They fixed their radiant eyes upon her, and after a moment they spoke.

"You know more than anyone about the humans. You lived among them. You know how they treated you, each other and the planet we gave them. What is your judgment, do they deserve a second chance?"

She looked down on her hands, once again perfect in their own creation no longer worn by mortal hardship, her hair covering her face for a moment as it hung down.

She then looked up on the higher beings, delivering her verdict.

Fiction: The Sleepwalker, a short story

The Sleepwalker

A short story, by Erik Engström, 2026-05-08

The alarm went off, an energic sharp sound, it cut deeply into the subconscious. Pulling the man out of another night of disturbed sleep. 

He had had the dreams again. The forest. The stone. The runic carvings.

When he first moved out to the countryside it was not only to escape the stressful city life as he had told his family, but there was something else. An magnetic attraction guiding him just like a compass pointing in a specific direction.

At the time he did not know what it was, he explained it away with the regular reasons, that fresh air and the connection to nature is close at heart for any human being.

But things started happening almost after the first week. His belongings started going missing from the wooden cabin, everything from tools to food. Strange dreams would plague his nights. Voices low as a whisper would be carried by the breeze.

The area was supposed to be sparsely populated and the nearest neighbors were far away, at least a good fifteen minutes of walking. He had bought the simple home for a bargain not even a month ago from an old lady destined for a nursing home. A plaque with the name Eunice Crants stamped into it was still nailed to the wall next to the door. Apparently Mrs. Crants’ health had deteriorated rapidly the last year and the family could no longer take care of her in her remote residence falling deeper into a deteriorating state.

One day, in order to clear his foggy mind, he decided to have a walk though the forest as it was still early afternoon, and he told himself he would remove the plaque with her name later as well so he could put up one with his own name, Loris Stedman.

As he was walking in the forest his mind quieted down. He focused on the surroundings and let himself forget his troubles for a while. His boots threaded onwards seemingly carelessly, but as with anyone that doesn’t heed their next step he ended up on a path he hadn’t seen before. It led deeper into the forest. The change in the air was subtle, barely noticeable by the conscious mind, but rather something that the primal instincts would pick up on. The trees grew taller, the light grew dimmer and the air grew thicker as if it had stood still for some time.

When he realized his predicament he had already arrived at an opening in the forest, where the treetops almost weaved together, forming a ceiling of sorts. Roots, thorns and small rocks covered the path, but it was as if his feet knew every obstacle, guiding him towards a large stone rising up in the middle of the clearing. A runic stone that made Loris shudder as it towered above him as his stood in front of it. 

 

As if something pulled his arm, his hand moved towards the gray obelisk and touched the surface, which was colder than he expected. His finger traced the roughly carved runes and it was as if the stone itself slowly fed off of his body heat. He stood in the high grass around the stone and as he moved his feet he heard a crunching sound. Looking down he could see pale bones strewn around. Some had been there for a long time and others still had traces of dried blood, indicating that whatever was going on here, had been going on for a long time and still to this day.

Disturbed by this finding, Loris turned around and quickly headed back to his new home. Heartbeats deafening and his breathing almost burning. 

He got home before the evening and it was first as he stood on the porch that he spoke the first words out loud. “What the hell was that?”. Even as he tried to make himself busy with the new name sign outside the door, he could not shake the feeling that he had been in the presence of something dark and evil. Trying to smooth out a bit of the surface of the wall where the new plaque would hang, he looked for his chisel, but despite emptying the toolbox on the porch, it was nowhere to be found. Under normal circumstances he would have just gotten angry but eventually gotten a new one, but something about this felt unusual. Ever since he had moved here, things had disappeared. Just the other week a hammer got lost and before that his favorite knife. Once is misfortune, twice is coincidence but three times, at least? Something was at play and it made Loris feel uneasy, so much so that he begrudgingly accepted a slight tilt on the sign with his name and returned indoors for the evening.

He lit a fire in the fireplace, washed his hands and headed for the sofa in the small living room. Facing the fire he felt calm return to his body, a sigh of satisfaction escaped and he leaned back eyes staring into the ever chaotic dancing of the flames. The flames that had brought protection and safety for humans since it’s first discovery, before the words to describe its comfort even came into existence, now kept him company.

He zoned out for a few seconds and found himself staring into the bright light, almost in a hypnotic state. For him there was no past, no future, not even the present. It was as if the fire spoke to him directly and he could only listen.

And at the edge of what is audible, a voice spoke, as if it was part of the background noise of the forest surrounding the cabin or coming from the walls themselves.

Shadows moved independent from the wild movements of the fire and he heard the voice of something ancient speak.

“I know you can hear me. You have bridged the abyss. They took her away from me before the work was complete and now you are chosen to fulfill the prophecy. You have done a good job so far. There is one last thing you need to finish before I can return from the other side.”

Hearing this Loris just nodded. Everything made sense to him now. The destination had revealed itself and so had the path leading there.

Night eventually came and this time he didn’t bother locking the door or setting the alarm.

Raspberry Pi: Pi-hole revisited

Having lost the SSH-password to my Raspberry Pi which was running the Pi-hole network wide adblocker and having a router that started bugging out every day, it was again time to redesign my home network.

This time I sat down and set up a more organized network map, by working with fixed IP:s and listing up my personal devices.

First I removed the router that was having issues and reset the intended router. Having the new router set up I could then work with the rest of the equipment again.

I reset my Raspberry Pi and reinstalled the OS following this guide.

Now having access to a fresh installation of the Raspberry Pi OS lite and Pi-hole, I could also do something I wasn't able to before due to the lost credentials, namely updating the Pi.

As usual you open Powershell as admin and run the command SSH username@ipaddress which connects you to the device itself.

Then you run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade to update the Pi itself.

After it is updated, you update the Pi-hole by first checking the version, using sudo pihole -v followed by sudo pihole -up if needed.

In the Pi-hole GUI I could also set up a list of clients, and divide them into two groups. I started with a group for personal devices and one group for IoT to get some practice in.

Cybersecurity: Networking, back to basics

Introduction

Every once in a while, it is good to brush off your knowledge and repeat the fundamentals. Sometimes you are completely new and need to build an understanding of the big picture or you don’t even know where to begin asking questions.

One important but ever-present area in cybersecurity is networks. It is one of many things that the blue team defends and the red team tries to breach. It is in the air and in the walls around you. It is with you when you travel and it keeps the world connected.

When thinking about networks I like to think about it from the perspective of the user and their devices. These devices at the “end of the line”, our phones and computers, are also known as endpoints.

In order for them to get updates, send messages, use certain apps or do anything productive in the web browser they need to be connected to the network. The smartphone or the computer might be connected wirelessly to a wi-fi, while a stationary computer might be connected with an ethernet cable.

The physical setup

In a business environment you sometimes see devices in the ceiling. There are devices like these that broadcast one or multiple wireless networks. Have you ever connected to a guest network at an office or a wi-fi in a café? It is likely that your device was communicating with that device in the ceiling, often called access point, or referred to as an AP.

So how is the access point able to broadcast a network for you to connect to? It happens to talk with something called a switch. It has a large number of ports, which are outlets for network cables. The switch can be managed by the IT team, segmenting the network traffic so that some devices cannot talk to other devices even if they are physically connected to the same switch. This division of traffic is referred to as Virtual Local Area Network (“VLAN”). This is a great way to enhance network security, for the simple reason that some devices might not be very safe and needs to be kept isolated.

The question then arises, how does the switch get network access and data to distribute throughout the workplace? Usually there is a router in the building that is connected to the outside, usually through a coaxial, copper or fibre-optic cable. Through this connection the router is talking to the company providing the customer with internet, the so-called internet service provider (“ISP”). When you look up your own or someone else’s IP-address online, it is the address of the router that you find, the public IP-address.

In a home environment on the other hand, it is common that you have only one device that does all things. It broadcasts wireless internet, distributes network through physical ports and has network protection in the form of a firewall. A firewall is basically a set of rules that allows and blocks certain traffic from going in or out. In a business grade environment, the firewall can be located in separate devices.

The non-physical side

We looked at the physical devices that can be used in networking, but it is only one side of the story. We also need to cover a bit about the things that you might not see, that are equally important.

Let’s start with the devices that you connect to the network, in order for the information to go to the right device they are provided an internal (“local”) IP-address on the network by something called the DHCP-server. IP stands for Internet Protocol and DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.

The IP-address that your phone is given on the network itself is normally not visible outside the network, when your phone visits a website it is your public IP-address that is shown. This is why devices on completely separate networks might have the same IP-address without any conflict. If two devices have the same IP-address on the same network however, it might cause issues. You can see the public IP-address as the address to an office building which the postal service is trying to deliver mail to. The local IP-address works like an identifier for the specific office to which the receptionist in the building is carrying the letter to. The router on the network, also called a gateway, has an IP-address too. This is so that your phone knows where to send the outgoing data for example.

It is worth mentioning MAC addresses as well, these are unique identifiers that is connected to the hardware in your device. While IP-addresses are provided and can change, the MAC normally cannot. However, it is possible to fake your MAC address, making it look like you use a different device than you actually are using. The act of faking this identifier can also be referred to as spoofing your MAC address.

When you visit a website you might enter a website address in the web browser, but your devices are thinking in IP-addresses, so there is something called DNS that helps with this translation. DNS stands for Domain Name System and it works like a phonebook. First your computer checks if the IP for the address that you are searching for already is stored in memory, otherwise it talks to a DNS server to get the correct IP so that it can communicate with the website. The DNS server can exist in different locations such as at your Internet Service Provider or at a public DNS provider (Cloudflare and Google being two commonly used ones). There is a certain type of attack called DNS poisoning that basically means that the phonebook contains malicious entries, so that the translation is corrupted. So even if you enter the correct website address, it connects you to a bad IP-address.

Finally, we will take a brief look at what is actually sent across the network.
The simplified version is that the raw data is sent through the network in wrappers called packets. Something called protocols define how the data is contained in these packets. With older and unencrypted protocols sensitive data might be intercepted if someone is sniffing the network.

The role of the defender

As you can see, there are many components that interact with each other and the defensive task doesn’t get easier. Taking inventory of what you need to protect, updating firmware and maintaining firewall policies are just a small part of network security. Security hardening is the process of reducing vulnerabilities and making your system harder to attack and that is something you need to work with regularly as a defender.

Cybersecurity: Quantum Computers

The quantum future

Introduction

One of the next big leaps in IT is the on-going and imminent development of quantum computers. I was very fascinated when I first heard about them and their potential a couple of years ago, which is why I want to share some of the fundamentals because of their implications on the cybersecurity field. This article aims to spread awareness without digging way too deep into the technical details, because frankly it is a complicated topic.

Encryption

First, we need to talk a bit about the basics of encryption, what it is and how it works.
The most basic example would be when you visit a website and enter sensitive information such as a password, perhaps you log onto your favorite social media. In many modern websites the information that travels between your computer and the remote server is protected with encryption. It is not readable for a human mind, it requires a key to remove the encryption essentially.

When sensitive data is sent, it often includes encryption. This essentially means that it is sent in an unreadable format, instead of a plaintext format, and only the right key can unlock the secret information. The encryption can be done with a method such as asymmetric encryption. One example is cryptography based on RSA (“Rivest-Shamir-Adleman”).

Asymmetric encryption uses two keys, one public and one that is kept private.
If you want to send data to someone, you send it using the recipient’s public key. They can then decrypt the data using their private key without having to share it with anyone.

As an extra step, the sender can sign what they send using their private key, which allows the receiver to confirm it using the public key of the sender.

The idea is that even if someone intercepts and stores the data being sent, they can’t read it, because they don’t have the right key. Sounds good right? In some cases, the encryption can be brute forced, revealing the secrets without having had the key. This can be done with a regular computer, but not always within a reasonable amount of time. This is where the quantum computers come in.

Quantum computers

So, what on earth is a quantum computer? They are energy efficient computers that solves really complex computational problems with the help of quantum mechanics. When we look at classical computers, which are the ordinary computers we are used to, they store information in bits, whereas the quantum computer stores the information in qubits. A bit is zero or one, while the qubit can be zero, one or a specific combination of both. When the qubit is in multiple states at once, it is referred to as being in superposition.

While there actually are quantum computers in use today there are still difficult problems that researchers are working on, still making them something of a thing of the future. There are organizations that already claim to have reached so called quantum supremacy, which is when a quantum computer can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve within a practical time frame.

When practical quantum computers will be more readily available it will also mean that plenty of sensitive data will be vulnerable. Fortunately, this scenario is still in the future and there are many years left to take precautions.

Asymmetric encryption is vulnerable to something called Shor's algorithm and even the longer encryption keys seem to be in danger of being defeated. Even if this might happen in many years there is still data stored today. Whether the data is stolen or not, it runs the risk of being decrypted. Data harvested today can be cracked later on as the quantum technology keeps maturing. This is one reason why new cryptographic algorithms are part of the solution.

As an example, NIST ("National Institute of Standards and Technology") that has worked with other encryption standards released three resilient post-quantum encryption standards in 2024.

The three standards that were selected after a lengthy investigation were:

* ML-DSA (Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm)

* SLH-DSA (Stateless Hash-Based Digital Signature Algorithm)

* ML-KEM (Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism)

There are multiple participants in the quantum race and perhaps we can see similarities with the AI revolution. Some companies will fall behind and others will excel with this new exciting technology.

Access to quantum tools will lead us to a world with new rules. New security challenges will arise which will put new demands on software and hardware. Threat actors will have new ways of working and the role of the defender will also change along with it.

I, for one, follow the development with great interest and hope you found the article interesting.

Sources

Below are links that helped me put the article together so that you may research the topic further.

Information about asymmetric encryption:

https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-networks/what-is-asymmetric-encryption/

An interview with D-Wave CEO regarding quantum computing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOfuh_Wdshw

An introduction to post-quantum cryptography by NIST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE_Y1C4QPU8

Why regular encryption is not quantum safe by IBM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecvCfTPRBrI

The three finalized post-quantum encryption standards by NIST:
https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2024/08/nist-releases-first-3-finalized-post-quantum-encryption-standards