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🔍 Important This post is part of a series. Also see parts 1 and 2. FCC Bans New Foreign Routers If you pay attention to tech news, you might’ve heard that the FCC recently "…updated its Covered List to include all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries." You can view a PDF of the news release here. Essentially, this means that foreign routers are banned. Preexisting ones are fine, but new ones aren’t. Indeed, following the link to their list reveals that all routers produced in a foreign country "…are deemed to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States" except in cases where conditional approval has been granted by the DoD or DHS. According to the executive branch determination that the FCC followed: read more...

One of the first things people notice when they see my setup (whether at cyber competitions or in pictures) is my keyboard, the SP-111. It’s essentially the opposite of what one normally expects. The numpad is on the left side, it has two (three?) spacebars, a variety of non-standard keys, and it runs on customized QMK Firmware. Not to mention the elephant in the room: it’s split in half. I won’t lie, it took a long time to finish and it was expensive. I invested a lot into customizing this keyboard, but I also learned a lot. The end result is a silent, reliable, and perfectly-tailored input device that I intend to use for the rest of my life. Many would find it hard to justify spending so much time and money on a keyboard, but a keyboard is more than just the sum of its parts when you work in cybersecurity. This post is an overview of anything someone might want to know about it; it’s just as much for my reference as it is anyone else’s. read more...

I participated in at least six cybersecurity competitions during my time as an ISIN student at Ferris State University. Now that my degree is finished, I thought it would be a good idea to record what I remember from the experiences. Apart from being a healthy thing to do, reflection is also a core analyst skill. Knowing how best to “make it mean something” after you finish a competition, certification, or other cyber engagement will give perspective to your experiences. Recording what happened or creating something like a lessons learned writeup can also benefit your peers and future analyst collaborators, so I feel grateful that the ISIN program reinforced this habit. read more...

I found yolk when searching for an easy way to manage and template my configuration files. I had been using GNU Stow beforehand, but it lacks a convenient templating method. Apart from the yolk documentation itself, I couldn’t find many resources about how to use it. I also haven’t seen it mentioned in many online discussions or lists of similar tools. This is a quickstart guide for replicating my yolk setup and getting started with configuration templating. If you’re interested, you can read about how I previously managed configuration files with Stow. Otherwise, skip straight to seeing how I use yolk. read more...

🔍 Important This post is part of a series. Also see parts 1 and 3. Second Access Point Because the first access point I deployed has a weaker signal than the Wi-Fi router it replaced, I need to deploy another access point to cover the basement. No new cables are getting installed—I’m just adding another access point along the path that already exists. See the diagram below for a better idea of what I’m talking about. read more...

🔍 Important This post is part of a series. Also see parts 2 and 3. Background & Goals I’ve been wanting to upgrade my home network for a long time. I’m severely limited in the types of cyber projects that I can engage with until I address this, so I thought that a home network upgrade had better be the first thing I complete after graduating. The existing setup is lacking in several areas: read more...