Update

Thank you to everyone who reached out on Twitter and directly; I am overwhelmed by the reaction especially I have not expected it; what was supposed to be a dry and semi-formal post about slowing down turned out to be probably more sentimental than it should.

I just want to say thank you and emphasize that it’s mainly about changing gears – probably research less and go to gym more for starters… In any case, I am fine, and I apologize for making you worry!

Old Post

Everything has its beginning and end. Both events have some pros and cons.

And typically, when you read something like this on the blog, it means it is the game over.

For over last (nearly) 7 years I tried my best to participate and give back to the security community by publishing about ideas, tools, as well as provide an honest critique of security solutions/ideas, and offer lots of research data that was never shared before; all in hope to give the most accurate (yet still mine, and subjective) view on the state of the affairs within our DFIR/RCE world, and offer an alternative to the industry fads, sometimes even idiocy of it, and so prevalent in our biz wishful thinking.

This post doesn’t actually end that. I love IT Security in general, I am still fascinated by it, and I am still a total noob when it comes to it; with a lifelong focus on the reverse engineering, computer forensics, incident response and anything related to this subject really I am here to stay and continue to write. You can’t just walk away from all this.

However…

This post tells you that I am going to slow down.

I am a blue teamer by heart and a red teamer by interest. Recent years brought to us a lot of commoditization in both areas; while 10 years ago you could say we sort of had garage days of DFIR, today we have lots of mature solutions, models and ideas that support our work. And there is not that much need now to provide novelty research either; seriously, lots of things are already known inside out; the large (and no-longer-just-only-AV-oriented) teams that emerged as a result of the last 10 years’ fight against the bad guys provide that additional research on regular, and often daily basis. For a small fish like me it is impossible to compete against it – I realized this around 2 years ago: a single contributor no longer has much place in this field. You need to be a part of a team, you need to collaborate, you need to represent and participate on a slightly different level. I kept going on, because I still had some ideas to talk about. Yet a slow decline of these novelty ideas is what drove me to write this post. I think the time for boutique security shops is over.

As a result I am changing the direction, and while I am saying that: I actually have no idea what that direction is today. Time will tell.

In any case…

Thank you for reading the blog so far, and all the feedback I received over the years. Being referenced by SANS, numerous books, presentations, and being mentioned in chit chats on various forums and platforms is the best satisfaction any security researcher can hope for.

Thank you!!!