weekly-updates

Weekly Update 26: I’m moving!

After long consideration and events within my life, I’m moving from my place to the another country property full time! It’s going to be a massive shift in lifestyle, but it’s where I want to be in life. I’m excited for what the future holds and

personal life

Writing can be difficult: My plans to make it easier!

I’m by no means a perfect writer. I often go through dozens of drafts before publishing the final one because I don’t feel it sounds right. I’ve read a few articles on how to write better and while there are some great tips I’ve found from

hosting

/64. It's not that hard.

As service providers begin to dish out IPv6 ranges, it’s become apparent that they don’t quite understand how IPv6 should be handed out. Handing out a single or smaller than /64 IPv6 range is unnecessary — especially if you’re a hosting provider. I’ve been hosting customers for

directadmin

DirectAdmin Wish-list

As I use DirectAdmin more and more, I’ve become very fond of the product and believe it’s well worth the money for it. Like any product, however, I’ve got some wish-list items that would be great if the developers would integrate. Unlike most wish-lists, I’ve spent

consulting

Why I'm becoming a consultant.

As I’ve grown in life and my career as a whole, the ecosystem around working for an employer was off-putting. I felt stranded at many times because there was limited to no flexibility, and no room for discussions. As time went on, this began to become a burden. As

email

Why should you consider using an Email Relay like SES?

You’ve probably heard the warning about how running your own email server is difficult. For many years I’ve ran my own email server, and it is definitely anything but difficult. Spamassassin cleans up the spam, rspamd does the outbound filtering to make sure no accounts have been compromised

directadmin

Installing OpenLiteSpeed on DirectAdmin

I recently switched to OpenLiteSpeed server on my DirectAdmin (hosting this very blog!) and wanted to share the simple installation process and tweaking the total workers available! By default, DirectAdmin ships with stock Apache. In most cases, stock Apache will work, however, OpenLiteSpeed is a good alternative for your infrastructure!

directadmin

Configuring your DirectAdmin server to use Amazon SES

I’ve recently migrated from Plesk to DirectAdmin, and one of the things I wanted to configure was Amazon SES for sending emails through my server. I prefer SES due to the pay-as-you-go model. In one month if I send zero emails, I’d rather not be paying for emails,

weekly-updates

Weekly Update 25: Enhancements to the blog!

I think this has been the quickest week so far this year. It’s like time has flown by, and I finally got a chance to think about the past few years and the growth I’ve been able to experience. I’m very thankful for everything and everyone in

backups

Backing up the giants: DirectAdmin Edition

I recently decided it was time to upgrade my server, and I wanted to give my workflow a face-lift. I’ve been using DirectAdmin a lot recently, and it’s shaped out to be quite a resourceful panel that let’s me get stuff done. But, coming from systems like

moving on

To this chapter of my ever changing life

So, this is it. It’s with a heavy heart that I’ve decided to resign from my full time day job. It’s been a very long ride, the memories made here will last a lifetime, and the knowledge gained is irreplaceable. I’ve been employed here for years,

weekly-updates

Weekly Update 24: Progression

It’s that time again, this week has gone by so quickly. I had a great day on Monday (Family Day) with my family. I’ve started forward momentum with my business, and both my wife and father are helping out on it now. It’s incredible to sit back

Weekly Update 23

This week went rather fast, I had lots of fun time being with family, jamming out on the HAM, and learned a few things along the way. I’ve made some small investments in my business, including working on better product landing pages. I’ve decided to give Divi a

Weekly Update 22: Bender

As I take my journey head-on into building denial of service protection & web application firewalls that are fully customizable and scale really well, I’ve learned a lot of new things — especially this week. The first being, that with a bit of kernel magic, I can now MITM whole IP

weekly-updates

Weekly Update 21: The Pitch

That was a long week and exciting week. I’d had so many more accomplishments last week and my business is starting to take off at a rapid pace. I just have to pace myself, so without further a due, let’s get this show on the road! The Business

business

Weekly Update 20: A New Road Ahead

This week has been by-far one of the shortest weeks of my life. It started incredibly slow after the Christmas / New Years holiday break, and sped up at rapid fire speed. Work has been slow, but I’ve been keeping myself busy, usually reading and making myself more knowledgeable about

business

The Network Operations Center: Part 1

The day has finally come, it’s time to build our first official Network Operations Center (NOC) for my business. I never expected this day to come so early, but with proven results, the customer base has grown very quickly. I’m proud to say I’ve went from zero

code

Developers: Try this!

In the spirit of security, I’d like to challenge every developer that reads this blog to one simple challenge: Every time you see a piece of code, spend some time assessing it, and understanding what it’s supposed to do, and how it could fail. Once you’ve done

fun

Good Morning Vietnam!

A surprising and fun tale happened on January 1st, 2020! My father and I were sitting in an outdoor shack (aptly names due to its structure), housed inside was the HAM Radio equipment. We wanted to listen in on Venezuela, but the conditions weren’t right and there wasn’t

2020

2019 - Reflection

As we approach the end of 2019, I pop open my last years resolutions to see how fan I’ve came in my progress. This year I’d like to share my goals from last year, my progress, and start new goals for the upcoming year. 2018-2019 Goals 1. Start

email

Email Migration: Part 1

I’ve decided after years of self-hosting my own email and recently using GSuite for a few domains to take advantage of their storage options (unlimited), I’d like to migrate my email server from postfix/dovecot hybrid to Exchange Server. I found that Exchange is fairly well supported, the

Weekly Update 13: New Horizons

I’ve began on my quest to start a non-profit foundation. As you may be aware, I’m pro-privacy, pro-security and believe you shouldn’t have to give up one to receive the other. There is no need for backdoors, or any system designed to circumvent an individuals privacy. I

ethical

Penetration Test Report Tips

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of penetration test reports. It’s given me lots more insight on forming a better report, my initial reports were subpar at-best now that I’ve done dozens of them. I thought I’d make this post and share some tricks I’ve

What happened last night? A story of DDoS

I received an alert from my filtering provider that my server was under attack. It was on the IP used for the internet gateway, which is interesting as I’ve kept everything pretty hidden with Cloudflare, firewall rules, and extra configuration. It felt like a targeted attack, but what caused

weekly-updates

Weekly Update 12: Security Newsletter and Forum coming soon!

I’ve begun a new adventure, I’ve teamed up with some friends to create a forum focused on cyber security research and system administration. It’s going to be interesting, and lots of hard work. I’m also starting a cyber security newsletter, called “Smash Sec” – a weekly newsletter