Security

The Day After: From Phone Numbers to Email Yesterday I solved my phone number privacy problem with a 1.5 euro disposable SIM card. Today? Time to tackle the email situation. Remember when I mentioned I’d “probably just create a new Proton Mail account” because I’d used up all my aliases? Well, today’s that day. And I decided to do it live on stream. Because apparently, I like making things interesting. Black Friday Timing: Accidentally Perfect Here’s the thing - I already have a ProtonMail account. I use it for other purposes. But for my personal site (zoltantoma.com), I need something separate. Something clean. Something that won’t mix my personal correspondence with professional inquiries. ...

The Sunday Evening Reality Check It’s Sunday evening, 10 PM. I should be in bed, browsing for some sci-fi show to watch until my partner comes over to watch something else. Instead, I’m here trying to write a blog post about a 1.5 euro security solution. Yesterday I made a bunch of test streams - didn’t save them, wasn’t planning to. Today I did my first real stream. Didn’t overthink it. Just sat down, documented yesterday’s work on the 10-hour OBS setup, then tried to write an integration test for the vagrant-wsl2-provider. ...

After five years managing thousands of servers in a security startup and two more years trying to build my own security SaaS, I’ve come to a realization: I’m done with cyber. Not with tech. Not with building. Just with security. And honestly? That’s okay. The Burnout Was Real Let me back up. From 2016 to 2021, I worked at a security startup. It was incredible - we built an all-in-one cybersecurity solution that protected millions of websites across thousands of servers. I led a small team developing the security agent, designed defense strategies against attack vectors, and shipped over 100 production releases. ...

Thousands of Viruses on My Laptop I know not everyone gets to attend ethical hacker training. Especially not malware analysis workshops. The interesting part? Having thousands of viruses and malware samples on your computer. Don’t try this at home. Unless you know exactly what you’re doing. First thing you need - a proper virtualization solution. Full virtualization. Don’t even think about Docker for this. We used VirtualBox back then. And we got access to a 6-10GB data disk. That we had to attach to the workshop VM, which was Kali Linux. ...

When we hear about major hacks, data thefts, and ransomware in the news, we shudder at how vulnerable we are. It’s no wonder that companies spend billions to secure their operations. If you happen to enter an organization that takes security seriously, it won’t be long before you find yourself in a toxic environment that people are reluctant to participate in. Peeking behind the curtain of the mystical world of security quickly reveals that the most significant risk factor in every organization is people. This realization immediately leads to finger-pointing, something I’ve seen all too often. ...

Intro My new teammates asked me if I had any juice security horror stories. This was a very memorable one. In the video above I tried to tell it in a standup-like fashion because if I write a script for it I would not publish it to day. ...

Script Hi, all curios mindes. I have been listening to Mo Gawdat’s Scary Smart audiobook for the last couple of days. I think if you love sci-fi, it is a must to listen to masterpiece. While he was reading the book, I was amazed by his brilliant humor. Despite the fact, he is talking about a serious topic. ...