MonkeHacks #67

Sydney, New Zealand, LHE Takeaways

Author

Monke
June 10, 2025

MonkeHacks #67

What a week - currently, I’m in Auckland in New Zealand. The southern island of New Zealand is Ireland’s antipode - its opposite point on the earth. So, in short, when I fly to Queenstown (a tourist hotspot on the southern island) on Thursday, I’ll be about as far from home as I could possibly be, barring going to space. There’s something poetic about that.

I had an amazing time in Sydney! My sleep schedule is a bit strange - I’ve been waking up at 5am. On one of the earlier days, I saw the sunrise at the Opera House with my good friend Douglas a.k.a archangel. That was a memorable morning. I’ll write more about the rest of the trip below.

Sydney Opera House, Sydney, from the boat that we took around Sydney Harbour.

Weekly Ideas / Notes 

  • So, main topic - Sydney. It was a really great week! I picked the wrong scope to look at in the LHE, so that didn’t go very well, but I learned a lot. My main takeaways:

    • I need to fuzz more.

    • I need to pivot away from client side a bit. It’s hard to get mega-crits with client side bugs - naturally this depends on the threat model of the program but the really cool, impressive bugs are usually server-side.

    • I also just need to speed up my hacking. I am slow. Too slow.

  • On a more social note - we went on a cruise around Sydney Harbour - this is where the awards ceremony took place (on the boat). Shubs took home the MVH belt, and he absolutely deserved it as he put in a performance for the ages in the LHE. His bugs were world-class.

  • After the event, we all went to Featherdale Wildlife Park in Sydney - essentially, it’s a wildlife park with native Australian animals such as koalas, echidnas, emus, and so on. We got photos with a koala. We were allowed to feed the kangaroos. And so on.

  • I went bouldering with the Spanish-speaking hackers - chiv, alexandrio, bsyop, and more. It was great fun - thank you for joining me!

  • Shubs kindly invited an1msh, André (0xacb) and Roni (arsene_lupin) and I to his house, and we had some great conversations there. Shubs has some really adorable cats - eternally grateful to Shubs for inviting us.

  • On the last two days, I stayed in an1msh’s spare room in Sydney. He was very kind and I saw Bondi Beach and various other places in the city, tried Nepalese food, and I visited a distant relative of mine (my grand-aunt) that my family had lost contact with - thankfully she was still around and doing well! And today I flew from Sydney to Auckland for the next stage of my trip - New Zealand (Auckland + Queenstown) until June 17.

Resources