7MS #734: Insight Recon
7 Minute Security
Hey friends! Today’s episode is a two-parter: some security stuff up front, and then a big ol’ personal celebration on the back half. If you’re strictly here for the security bits, I love you and you’re free to bail after the first half. If you’re here for both, God bless you. Part 1: Kicking the tires on Insight Recon What it is: is an Active Directory security assessment tool out of Heath Adams’ new venture, . I signed up for early access a while back, finally got a login, and took it for a spin this week in my lab. Not a sponsor, not an ad — just a...
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7MS #733: Tales of Pentest Pwnage – Part 87
7 Minute Security
Hey friends! Today’s episode comes to you from a parking lot in the rain, with a mint hot cocoa in hand and your host absolutely dragging his butt (D-R-A-G-G-I-N-G, not D-R-A-G-O-N – I’ve never seen a dragon’s butt and can’t speak to how mine compares). I’ve had a bunch of internals back to back lately and I’m basically a drooling dog who found a frisbee and refuses to put it down. Sleep be darned. So instead of walking through one test start to finish, I want to share a few things that have helped me claw out a foothold in environments that are otherwise really locked...
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7MS #732: Tales of Pentest Pwnage – Part 86
7 Minute Security
Hey friends! Welcome back to another Tales of Pentest Pwnage — my favorite mini-series where I share the good, the bad, and the “why didn’t I check THAT first?!” moments from real-world engagements. Today’s story has a little bit of everything: a legit path to domain admin, some late-night rabbit holes, a lesson in humility, and a villain you’ve definitely met before. (Spoiler: it’s DNS.) A couple of quick plugs before we dive in: Private GOAD training is going strong! — We just wrapped a 3-day private session (7 students — that’s max capacity!) of our Active...
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7MS #731: CARTP – Cloud Red Team Tactics for Attacking and Defending Azure – THE FINAL CHAPTER!
7 Minute Security
Hey friends! Fair warning: today’s episode is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster — we’ve got a big security win, some honest lab feedback, and a very personal share about my dad’s funeral. Buckle up. certified, baby! — I’m officially a , courtesy of the folks at . It’s been a long time coming (I originally signed up for the live version and fell off after missing a couple Saturdays), but I came back for the self-paced 30-day version and finally finished the job. The lab experience — the good: — ~25 objectives, a solid lab guide, and a really fun...
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7MS #730: Baby’s First Project Swarm
7 Minute Security
Hey friends! Still your grieving pal over here, but also your swarming friend and Protecting My Network Edge host — because this week I’ve been tinkering with something called and I’ve got my diapers on regarding it, but I really, really like what I see so far. Then, fair warning, I flip on the tangent light and verbally barf up some personal stuff at the end. I’ll make the hand-off super clear, so if you want your free security podcast to do exactly what you want and nothing else — totally fair, and you won’t offend me by hopping off. Here’s what we cover: ...
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7MS #729: Pwning Dracarys
7 Minute Security
Hey friends! Still your grieving pal over here, but also your happy hacking host — because today we’re diving into baby’s first ! (Yes, I’m probably pronouncing that wrong. Yes, I’m going to keep saying it anyway.) Quick housekeeping: A few days ago I published a mini-series episode from our series, where I shared the news that my dad passed away last Friday. So many of you reached out with condolences — thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’ll share a little life update at the end of this episode. But first — Dracarys! I didn’t know it existed until...
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7MS #728: Securing Your Family During and After a Disaster – Part 8
7 Minute Security
Hey friends! This is a tough one to write. My dad passed away on Friday, and instead of the hacker-y tech episode I had planned, I pivoted to something more personal — another installment of our “Securing Your Family During and After a Disaster” series. I talk pretty raw and transparently today about loss, grief, and the practical stuff that makes a hard situation just a little less hard. Fair warning: it’s about death and dying, so if that’s not where your head is today, it’s totally okay to duck out – we’ll catch you next week. Here’s what I cover: My dad’s last...
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7MS #727: Securing Your Mental Health – Part 7
7 Minute Security
Hello friends! It’s been over a year since we did a dedicated mental health episode, so today I’m doing a big catch-up and running through my 7-point plan for being a more mentally secure me. None of this is professional medical advice (I am most definitely not a doctor or therapist — well, actually, I am in therapy, but that’s tip #5), so take what’s useful and leave what isn’t. Terms and conditions apply. Here’s my current mental health toolkit: Drink a ton of water — I try to chug a full Yeti thermos before my morning mint hot cocoa, then keep it going...
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7MS #726: Baby’s First Hermes
7 Minute Security
Hello friends! I’ve been on a bit of an AI agent journey lately, and today I’m sharing my experience ditching OpenClaw and going all-in on — a self-hosted AI agent built by . A sold me on it, I wiped my Mac Mini (again), and baby’s first Hermes adventure began! Here’s what we get into today: Why I left OpenClaw — After getting the Mac Mini set up, OpenClaw left me feeling pretty meh: burning through API requests, random mid-conversation shutdowns, and a marketplace where the top listings were flagged as “potentially malicious.” Hard pass....
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7MS #725: Building a Bulletproof Backup Solution
7 Minute Security
Hey friends! Backups are not as cool as pentesting, but boy do they matter when things go sideways. This week I’m sharing how a Proxmox backup disk space meltdown led me to a completely overhauled — and honestly pretty bulletproof — backup setup for both home and work. Claude played a big role in helping me sort it all out. Here’s what we get into: The backup history tour — I’ve been through CrashPlan, Dropbox, Backblaze (which saved my bacon after my in 2019!), and a mystery one that may or may not have had “Panda” in the name. These days I’m settled...
info_outlineHey friends! Today’s another Tales of Pentest Pwnage!
Quick tangent first on a couple side projects: I’ve got a music thing at quack.house (like the duck noise, not the drug) and a podcast with my dancer son Atticus at DadOfADancer.com. Speaking of Atticus — he just landed a spot in Master Ballet Academy’s summer program in Phoenix, and I am a very proud dance dad over here.
OK, on to the pentest:
- A weird runas quirk: If your AD test account password ends in a percent sign, runas seems to misbehave (Claude thinks Windows is interpreting the
%as a variable delimiter). Workaround: runascs.exe, which wraps your tool launch with creds inline. Worked like a champ — notes over on the 7MinSec.wiki. - Standard first pass: PingCastle for the AD overview, then Snaffler for share crawling, with Chimas as a nicer web UI for searching the Snaffler JSON.
- The “Snaffler missed something” moment: Snaffler is great but it primarily uses pattern matching, so manual review of interesting directories still matters. I found a PowerShell script with a funky obfuscation routine, fed it to Claude for context, tracked down the function definition, and ended up decrypting a local admin password.
- Going loud: SMB-sprayed that cred across the subnets → handful of machines popped → ran a deeper, targeted Snaffler against just those boxes → enumerated sessions and spotted a domain admin interactively logged in.
- Plan A fizzled: Wanted to pull off a favorite trick — sneak in via WinRM and queue a scheduled task as the logged-in DA (no password needed). WinRM was disabled. Oh fart.
- Plan B — the “trap” file: Dropped a malicious .library-ms file directly into the DA’s desktop folder. No clicks required — just the desktop being open is enough to trigger an HTTP coercion to my evil box. (Caveat: I think you need a DNS record or computer object that the victim box trusts as “intranet zone.”)
- The escalation: Had ntlmrelayx standing by, ready to relay to LDAP on a DC. The coerced auth fired the moment the “trap” file landed on disk. An interactive LDAP shell fired in the DA’s context, and I used it to add my low-priv account to the Domain Admins group.
- Defense angles: Rather than chase each technique individually (LDAP signing, web client GPOs, library-ms neutralization, etc.), I like to back up to the systemic fixes that break the chain earlier. Big ones here: deploy LAPS so a single decrypted local admin password isn’t a master key everywhere, and a thorough sweep for sensitive data and custom obfuscation routines hanging out on shares.
Got thoughts on any of this? Shoot ’em over — I always love hearing how you’d have tackled things differently.