About Me
Member of technical staff at Anthropic working cybersecurity safeguards.
Formerly Principal Lab Architect at HackTheBox. Review and test boxes for release on the platform. Automate and reduce boring work.
Before working at HTB, 19+ years of information security / technical analysis work in the US public and private sectors. Experience in SOC/CIRT, Threat Intelligence, Red Teaming, Threat Research.
CTF addict.
Information Contributions
Mentions in Media / Research
- 7MS Podcast - Tales of Pentest Pwnage - Part 73 [13 June 2025]. [Site]
- SANS Internet Storm Center Daily Podcast [August 6 2024] - Shared analysis and demo of OFBiz exploitation [Site] [Audio] (Starts @ 3:17)
- CIPHER: Cybersecurity Intelligent Penetration-Testing Helper for Ethical Researcher [27 July 2024] - Research on LLM training for penetration testing. [Site]
- CyberWire Daily Podcast [September 15 2022] - Discussed research on a PayPal phishing scheme. [Site] [Audio] (Starts @ 21:35)
Blog Posts
- HackTheBox Blog: When “Easy” isn’t easy: How to build skills for hacking success, by 0xdf, 20 Sept 2024
- HackTheBox Blog: Exploiting the Looney Tunables vulnerability on HTB (CVE-2023-4911), by 0xdf - 11 October 2023
- HackTheBox Blog: Introducing Hack The Box Seasons: A new way to test your hacking might, by 0xdf - 17 February 2023
- HackTheBox Blog: It is Okay to Use Writeups, by ippsec and 0xdf - 11 February 2022
- HackTheBox Blog: How to Create a Vulnerable Machine for HackTheBox, by 0xdf and ippsec - 29 Sept 2021
Conference Talks / Interviews / Presentations
- Regular panelist on weekly HTB: Cube Talks - Jan 2024 - Present
- HTB Office Hours Webinare - Purple Teaming / NextJS - 29 May 2025
- Cyber Apocalypse 2025 Workshop - Powershell Malware Analysis - 22 Mar 2025
- HTB Stories - Unpacking CAPE and Active Directory Exploitation - 7 Mar 2025 [YouTube]
- HTB Office Hours Webinar - Ransomware Readiness - 28 Jan 2025 [Link]
- HTB University CTF Talks - Let’s Sherlock! An Introduction to Blue Team Training - 12 Dec 2024 [YouTube]
- Gupshup Talk @ BSides Pakistan - 23 Nov 2024
- Cyber Apocalypse 2024 Hacking Workshops - Going Beyond Root on Beginner Forensics Challenges - 8 Mar 2024 [YouTube]
- Seer Spotlight - Hack Red Con - 13 Feb 2024
- Uni CTF Workshops - Some Forensics Challenge from Last Year - 7 December 2023 [YouTube]
- USCG Cyber Rush Week - Cyber Competitions Panel - 6 June 2023
- Cyber Apocalypse 2023 Hacking Workshops - Forensics Challenges Walkthroughs - 17 March 2023 [YouTube]
- HTB Stories #11 - Cyber Horror Stories w/0xdf & Dinosn - 27 Oct 2022 [YouTube]
- Cyber Apocalypse 2022 Hacking Workshops - Tips and Tricks for Forensics Challenges - 13 May 2022 [YouTube]
- Cyber Santa Is Coming To Town - Hacking Pary - Forensics Challenges - 14 Dec 2021 [YouTube]
- HTB Stories #3 - 0xdf - Creating HTB Machines - 30 Sept 2021 YouTube
- H@cktivityCon 2021 - Analyzing Phishing Documents 101 - 18 Sept 2021 [YouTube]
- Source Zero Con 2021 - Analyzing Phishing Documents 101 - 26 May 2021 [YouTube]
Open Source Contributions
- Author of PyHTBcli, a command line tool for interacting with HackTheBox, available on PyPi (Unmaintained).
- Significant contributor to htb-api, a Python library used to interact with the HackTheBox API.
Notible CTF Accomplishments
SANS Holiday Hack Challenge
- 2024 🏆 Extra Special Noteworthy Exemplary Trophy (ESNET) Award 🏆 - Solution
- 2023 Super Honorable Mention - Solution
- 2022 🏆 Best Overall Answer 🏆 - Solution
- 2021 🏆 Best Technical Answer 🏆 - Solution
- 2020 Honorable Mention - Solution
- 2019 Super Honorable Mention - Solution
- 2018 Honorable Mention - Solution
- 2017 Honorable Metnion
- 2016 Honorable Mention
- 2015 Honorable Mention
Flare-On Challenge
- 2024 - Completed all challenges (124th out of 242 finishers, 5,324 players)
- 2022 - Completed all challenges (231st out of 494 finishers, 5,345 players)
- 2021 - Completed all challenges (252nd out of 341 finishers, 4,578 players)
SANS Netwars
Top 3 finishes:
| Event | Category | Finish | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| SANSFIRE | Core Netwars, Individual | 1st | 19 July 2024 |
| Tournament of Champions | Core Netwars, First Time Team (w/ Ippsec) | 2nd | 17 Dec 2021 |
| Tournament of Champions | Core Netwars, Veteran Team (w/ Ippsec, PwnEIP, kfiducua, and enordbo) | 1st | 16 Dec 2019 |
| Tournament of Champions Europe | Core Netwars, Veteran Team (w/ Ippsec, PwnEIP, kfiducua, and enordbo) | 1st | 24 July 2019 |
| Tournament of Champions | Core Netwars, Veteran Team (w/ Ippsec, PwnEIP, kfiducua, and enordbo) | 1st | 17 Dec 2018 |
| SANSFIRE | Core Netwars, Individual | 1st | 20 July 2018 |
| Tournament of Champions | Core Netwars, Team | 3rd | 18 Dec 2017 |
| SANS Rocky Mountain | Netwars, Individual | 2nd | 14 July 2016 |
Neutrino Cannon
Member of the Neutrino Cannon CTF Team. The team wins mostly without me, but I’ve contributed to some successes.
HackTheBox
Dedicated HackTheBox player, reaching highest rank of 4 on the global leaderboard on 2 March 2019.
Certifications
- Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP)
- GIAC Defending Advanced Threats (GDAT)
- GIAC Reverse Engineering Malware (GREM)
- GIAC Exploit Researcher and Advanced Penetration Tester (GXPN)
- GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA)
- GIAC Certified Forensic Examiner (GCFE)
- Splunk Certified Power User
- Splunk Certified User
Some or all of these have expired…
Generated Challenges
HackTheBox
Machines
- Resource - 3 August 2024
- Agile - 4 March 2023
- Support - 31 July 2022
- ScriptKiddie - 6 Februrary 2021
- RE - 20 July 2019
- SecNotes - 25 August 2018
Challenges
- Hypercraft - 14 July 2023 as challenge in HTB Business CTF
- Relic Maps - 18 March 2023 as challenge in Cyber Apocalypse CTF, now on HTB
- MBCoin - 15 July 2022 as challenge in HTB Business CTF, now on HTB
- Diagnostic [Forensics] - 10 June 2022
- PersistenceIsFutire [Forensics] - 14 May 2021
- emo [Forensics] - 20 Nov 2020
- oBfsC4t10n2 [Forensics] - 24 April 2020
- oBfsC4t10n [Forensics] - 1 Nov 2019
Hackvent
- 2022 Day 3 - gh0st