RC RANDOM CHAOS

Articles

Long-form writing on tech, culture, and the edges of the internet.

A postcard breached a warship
physical securityiot threats

A postcard breached a warship

A 5 dollar Bluetooth tracker hidden in a postcard broadcast a 585 million dollar warship's position for 24 hours. The control that failed was classification.

5 min read
Binding 65535 ports is the easy part
honeypotdeception

Binding 65535 ports is the easy part

Architecture and evasion realities of an LLM honeypot binding all 65535 ports - TPROXY, latency tiers, fingerprint defence, and detection traps.

15 min read
CISA flagged a 17-year-old Excel flaw
excel vulnerabilitycisa advisory

CISA flagged a 17-year-old Excel flaw

A 17 year old Excel flaw is being actively exploited and flagged by US cyber defence. Operator analysis of what failed, why, and what must change.

7 min read
Engineering teams keep granting agents production database writes
AI agentsLLM security

Engineering teams keep granting agents production database writes

AI agent vulnerabilities are systems engineering failures, not security failures. The fix is architectural containment, not better prompts or guardrails.

9 min read
Itron's 8-K names an IT intrusion
cybersecuritysupply chain

Itron's 8-K names an IT intrusion

Itron disclosed an internal IT breach. Technical analysis of attack vectors, supply chain blast radius, and what utility defenders should assume.

16 min read
Kuwait put a listening post in your pocket
surveillanceidentity boundaries

Kuwait put a listening post in your pocket

Kuwait's mandated cybersecurity app is not a privacy issue. It is surveillance architecture that relocates the identity boundary inside the device.

6 min read
Lagos published guidelines, not controls
cybersecuritypolicy enforcement

Lagos published guidelines, not controls

Lagos cybersecurity guidelines describe intent, not enforcement. An operator analysis of why policy without system-level controls does not stop attackers.

8 min read
License audit caught a six-week account takeover
account takeovercontrol failure

License audit caught a six-week account takeover

A six-week account takeover surfaced in a license audit that never checked access legitimacy. Why that gap is a control failure, not a breach.

7 min read
cybersecurityred team

Pick offense or defense

Two paths into infosec - offense and defense - broken down at the mechanism level. Foundation, tooling, telemetry, and the divergence point.

6 min read
The helpdesk chat window is the breach
microsoft teamshelpdesk impersonation

The helpdesk chat window is the breach

Microsoft Teams helpdesk impersonation succeeds because identity verification is placed at the channel boundary, not at the credential action.

6 min read
The power adapter was the attack
hardware implantsupply chain

The power adapter was the attack

A WiFi camera concealed in a hotel power adapter transmitted to a foreign server. The boundary failed at the physical layer.

7 min read
Your CAC has never checked who you are
CAC securityPKI trust model

Your CAC has never checked who you are

A CAC verifies a certificate's cryptographic validity, not the person holding it. How trust delegation and assumption drift open the gap in DoD PKI.

7 min read