Bundespolizei CTF 2025 Walkthrough: Cracking the Code of Germany's Federal Police 🚔
A technical walkthrough of the 2025 Bundespolizei Capture The Flag competition, covering challenges in forensics, reversing, cryptography, and network analysis.
I am Alex Bilz
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Compliance as Code: Auditing Large-Scale GCP Environments with InSpec/CINC
Auditing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) environments at scale presents unique challenges for security teams. This comprehensive guide introduces InSpec as the definitive solution for automated, continuous compliance. Get instant access to the open-source InSpec profile I maintain, and implement a streamlined, infrastructure-as-code approach to GCP governance and security validation.
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Harvesting Passwords From Cisco Configs Posted on Online Community Forums
An article about why sharing your Cisco running config file on public support forums may be dangerous. It starts with a general introduction to secrets found in running configs, highlights the process of harvesting configs using metagoofil and decrypting the password hashes.
Enumerating SMB Shares With smbscan: A hands-on guide
A wee writeup about the SMB enumeration tool smbscan, which I had recently discovered on GitHub. The post introduces SMB, highlights the functionality of smbscan, and provides practical insights for uncovering hidden shares, finding sensitive files and auditing permissions.
Who's watching you? Security Analysis of the LSC 1080P IP Camera from Action
A wee writeup of a security analysis of an LSC 1080P IP Camera sold by Action. The posts summarise multiple vulnerabilities we could identify including weak encryption of passwords, lack of authentication and inappropriate hardware hardening.
SQL Injection Vulnerability in ChurchCRM (CVE-2021-41965)
A wee writeup of an SQL injection vulnerability I had found within the open-source ChurchCRM CRM software. This vulnerability allows logged-in users to completely compromise the database.
Recovering WIFI SSIDs from Chromium's Network Persistent State File
In this post, I'll explain how Chromium's Network Persistent State file can be utilised to recover SSIDs a suspect has previously been connected to.
A Forensic Gold Mine III: Forensic Analysis of the Microsoft Teams Desktop Client
In this post, I will look at the abundance of forensic artefacts which can be collected from Microsoft Teams Client on Windows Desktops.
A Forensic Gold Mine II: Forensic Analysis of Signal Messenger on Windows 10
In this post, I will look at the abundance of forensic artefacts which can be collected from Signal on Windows Desktops.
A Complete List of Free Flight Search APIs in 2021
In this blog post, I will have a look at freely available APIs for searching flight tickets.
A Forensic Gold Mine I: Forensic Analysis of Viber Messenger on Windows 10
In this post, I will look at the abundance of forensic artefacts which can be collected from Viber on Windows Desktop.
Cracking NTLM Hashes on Google Cloud's Nvidia Tesla T4 GPU
In this post I will explain how I used a Nvidia Tesla T4 GPU rented from Google Cloud Platform to crack NTLM hashes using hashcat and John the Ripper at blazing speeds.
Russian Railway (РЖД) API Documentation
In this post I will present an API Documentation of the РЖД I had documented over at Postmans documenter and give an example how Python can be used to query data about Russian Railways.
Unofficial Abertay University Latex Templates
An introduction to a set of LaTeX templates I had created as part of my graduate course at Abertay University.
Generating Hugo Posts from an API using Python
In this post, I will be showing a simple solution for generating Hugo Posts from a JSON API using Python.
Yet Another Aviation Database!?
In this post, I will talk about the pros and cons of data available by openflights.org and present an travelhackingtool.com
Rotating Free Elite Proxies for Web scraping in Python 3 and an Alternative
In this post I will be showing a simple solution for using freely available elite proxies in Python for webscraping tasks.
Installing PostGIS on Uberspace 7
In this tutorial I will show you how those can a PostGIS stack on Uberspace.
Repairing a Canon Scanfront 220p with a disk boot failure
I recently got myself a Canon ScanFront 220p Scanner to empower my efforts to quickly digitalize a huge amount of documents, which I’d carefully accumulated through the past couple of years. While my scanner, which I got for 42 € of eBay Kleinanzeigen was from a technical point in great conditions, I know it had one “minor” software issue: It wouldn’t boot.
PowerShell Script for counting elements in a PST file
Guide to emoji usage in Hugo
Finding Hidden City Flights using Neo4j & Python 🐍 Part #3
In this post, I’ll introduce you to hidden city ticketing using Python.
Finding multi-stop flights using Neo4j & Python 🐍 Part #2
In this blog-post, I’d like to give you a first introduction on how we can search for flights using Python and the Kiwi API. Excited? Let’s get started💻🖱️.
Finding multi-stop flights using Neo4j & Python 🐍 Part #1
As you’d probably figured out by now, traveling is a big passion of Markus and mine. However, as students, our travel budget has some serious constraints.
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