One of my friends is into vaping and has recently switched to single-use e-cigarettes, which resemble the normal smoking experience: you can buy them over the counter or from a vending machine, it comes packaged with all the warning signs, it is self-contained (no need to charge, refill, etc.), just unwrap the package, vap and when you are done you just throw it away. In summary: convenience. I am not going to go into the health aspects of vaping, anyone is free to do what they want with their body - but instead on the impact it has on the environment and, by extension, everyone else. I guess you could summarise as “Single use vaping seriously harms everyone on the planet”.

What’s the fastest / funniest / more satisfying / less risky way to make a career in cybersecurity? Every now and then I get asked by colleagues starting in information security what is the best area for them to focus on; this article summarises my views on choosing a successful career in cybersecurity.

The Nikko Hawg RC car piece for the steering-transmission is made of ABS plastic and is held in place through two metal screws which eventually eat into the plastic, loosening the connection and preventing the steering from working. I ran out of replacement screws so decided to 3D print a redesigned piece with nut catchers that would not suffer from the same problem, you can find the STL files on our Deprogramming Obsolescence repository (along with editable OpenSCAD files in case you need to adjust the sizes for other similar Nikko cars). If you modify the designs can you share them back with the community please?

Reverse engineering an RSA SecurID hardware token to understand its key operation principles and how resistant they are to attacks to obtain the seed vs the software token option.

While trying to reverse engineer the VidCon Youtube OnStage bracelets I had the need to access the contents of an EEPROM that is used as external storage by the main microcontroller, however I did not want to de-solder the EEPROM to get access to it so I started looking at ways to dump the contents while the EEPROM was still in-circuit.

The Gibraltar Government publishes a daily COVID-19 report that includes number of conducted tests, how many cases are active and how many people have recovered. There is no historical information available so I have recorded the series since these started being published on the 12th March 2020 and generated the charts below. The raw numbers can be downloaded so you can run your own analysis.

Key highlights of the sessions and hacking villages that I attended at the 2020 BSidesSF conference in San Francisco. This year the conversation inspired discussions around changing the way in which we work in cybersecurity, by getting people more involved or approaching the same problems in a different, more efficient way. Read on to find out what the SF cybersecurity scene had to say.

There is plenty of documentation on integrating javascript applications with Microsoft cloud authentication, however there is little information on how to define which users are allowed to log-in, managing them and assigning the roles your application uses to them using Azure AD. Read on to learn how to do an end-to-end integration of Angular, Azure AD and user+role management.

The plastic shelf corners in our SMEG fridge are quite flimsy and after a couple of years they just broke away. It has been impossible to source replacements so we decided to design a simple functional 3D printable piece to replace them, you can find the STL files on our Deprogramming Obsolescence repository (along with editable OpenSCAD files in case you need to adjust the pieces). If you modify the designs can you share them back with the community please?

After replacing the actuator on our Happ Super joystick gameplay has been much better, however the microswitches are showing their age so I ordered a pair of Industrias Lorenzo Eurojoystick 2 for 18 EUR a piece.

We have had a 1980s Faultless generic arcade cabinet for the best part of a year without many hassles, the usual fine-tuning when changing JAMMA boards (that I have recently solved with a Pi2Jamma) but not much more to complain about: plain good old fun with friends and family.

When I have friends over we regularly end up playing at the arcade cabinet and having a good laugh. For a while I have been tinkering with the idea of building a small self-contained Raspberry Pi powered arcade controller for them to take back home so that they can spread the arcade love :-)