Notes of a Gerbil

Here I was, just got home, looked at Twitter and saw that John McAfee had posted a few videos discussing the BitFi wallet, the "unhackable" cryptocoin wallet. The date was 2nd August 2018 and the BitFi wallet was being hacked! I mean, the device was really being torn apart - it had been investigated; rooted; cast onto other devices etc. but this blog isn't about that, it's about Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). I watched one of his videos , and around about a minute into the video John says, and I quote, " ...and if you are using two factor authentication you are an idiot. So more than one way of, of securing something is not necessarily secure. " This made me think. And rub my chin. And think a bit more. Did he really say that?!? Seriously though, did he??? He comes out with some wacky things but...!!! I was gob-smacked! I put the video back and yes, that's exactly what he said! So 2FA is only used by idiots is it?!? This was a stupid thing to ...

Gain the PIN of ANY debit card. ***DISCLAIMER : I AM NOT HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE, EMBARRASSMENT OR TIME WASTED FROM FOLLOWING OUT ANY OF THE TECHNIQUES DESCRIBED IN THIS ARTICLE*** Some people know me, other people don't. In a nutshell I am one of those cyber security types, not the type that will find vulerabilities, exploit them then brag about them, but one who will find vulerabilities, then report on them and not brag. After all, I am a penetration tester, it is what I do for a job. But sometime I may stumble upon a security flaw that I think should be reported to the public, to keep the reader safe and, well, alive. Enjoy the read! gerbil (follow me on Twitter: @gerbil ) ----- S o, you've pilfered that debit card from your victim and you are seriously strapped for cash. Well, one way you could go about this would be to take a few trips to the supermarket, buying bits of shopping (under £20) and take advantage of the fucking awful "contactless...

Below is the second article that I had published in the Autumn 2015 issue of the awesome 2600 magazine. The idea behind the article was to provide an insight into how pliable people can be in order to help others and how they divulge information with everyday innocent chit-chat (this term is referred to as "Social Engineering").  Enjoy the read! gerbil (follow me on Twitter: @gerbil ) My Voice Is My Key. GerbilByte, 2015 So there I was. I was drafted in to work a second time for a small company (who again shall remain nameless, but for this article we will call the company Bumble Bee Internet Security Services) for several months. Again. As if I'd just copied-and-pasted this opening paragraph from my previous article ( Taking Your Work Home After Work, 2600 2014/15 Winter edition – buy the back issue if you've not got it ). This time though it was a much better company – I was basically drafted to penetrate the physical security of a co...

Below is one of the first articles that I had published. It appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of 2600 Magazine, an awesome magazine that publishes awesome things. The idea behind the article was to provide an insight into mixing encrypted data into a normal .jpg image and pushing it through a firewall. Enjoy the read! gerbil (follow me on Twitter: @gerbil ) Taking Your Work Home After Work. GerbilByte, 2014 So there I was. I was drafted in to work for a small company (who shall remain nameless, but for this article we will call the company Bumble Bee Internet Security Services) for several months. At the end, as well as a juicy pay-check, I realised that I had written a load of little scripts that I wanted to keep. I zipped up my folder of goodies to email to myself and encrypted it for obvious reasons then attached it to an internal email to send it. DENIED! Bumble Bee Internet Security Services (BBISS from now on) was a company whose email sys...