MonkeHacks #75

Wow, what a week. The Google LHE and Def Con happened, and I stayed in Cork for one night on the way back to Scotland, before flying back to Edinburgh to sleep in my own bed again. I had an incredible time. Now I’m trying to get back to my routine before flying to Austria on the 24th, and then flying to Japan with my Austrian friend on the 26th. I did a short pentest, which is nice (it keeps the bills paid) but otherwise, I was just recuperating. Now my energy levels are almost back to normal and I am back exercising and hitting every task in my daily routine again.

Weekly Ideas / Notes 

• I had a great sleep schedule in Vegas, waking up at around 6:30am every day, but that unfortunately translated to terrible jetlag once I returned back to Scotland. Efforts are being made to fix this with mixed results.

• The Google LHE went okay; I didn’t win anything but I’m reasonably satisfied with how I did - some things just didn’t go my way. Def Con was amazing. I hadn’t been back in 3 years but seeing so many familiar faces at Bug Bounty Village was just incredible. I did meet some German speakers there, and my German wasn’t too bad. Lots of work to do. Fortunately, the friend I’m going to Japan with speaks German so I can practice while I’m there.

• I have to hand it to Ariel and Harley - Bug Bounty Village is an amazing place. It’s nice to have a place to belong to at Def Con, but more than that, it’s great to see familiar faces and to meet new people from the community as well. I want to give a talk next year; I couldn’t this year because I found out that I was going to Vegas after the CFP deadline.

• I’ve got about 8-10 days to get myself back to a fully operational state before I fly to Vienna and then Japan with my friend. That trip will be about two weeks long and entirely a holiday. I plan on visiting my relatives in Japan again. I won’t be too active in security while I’m on that trip - I need to take a short holiday before the next Google Bugswat LHE in Mexico City in early October.

Reading List

• Currently:

  • Fiction:

    • Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu (130/600 pages)

  • Non-Fiction: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel (150/300 pages)

• Next on the list:

  • Fiction: Mort by Terry Pratchett

  • Non-Fiction: Day Zero to Zero Day by Eugene Lim (SpaceRaccoon)

Resources

• XSS in Google IDX Workstation: An insanely long and comprehensive writeup from sudi. Great work.

• Who's Not Getting Laid Off?: Introspective post from Daniel Miessler.

• Unfortunately I didn’t really have time to compile more stuff here this week. Sorry!