7 Minute Security

Hey friends! Still your grieving pal over here, but also your swarming friend and Protecting My Network Edge host — because this week I've been tinkering with something called  Project Swarm  and I've got my diapers on regarding it, but I really, really like what I see so far. Then, fair warning, I flip on the tangent light and verbally barf up some personal stuff at the end. I'll make the hand-of...

Hey friends! Still your grieving pal over here, but also your happy hacking host — because today we're diving into baby's first  Dracarys ! (Yes, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. Yes, I'm going to keep saying it anyway.) Quick housekeeping: A few days ago I published a mini-series episode from our  How to Secure Your Family During and After a Disaster  series, where I shared the news that my d...

Hey friends! This is a tough one to write. My dad passed away on Friday, and instead of the hacker-y tech episode I had planned, I pivoted to something more personal — another installment of our "Securing Your Family During and After a Disaster" series. I talk pretty raw and transparently today about loss, grief, and the practical stuff that makes a hard situation just a little less hard. Fair war...

Hello friends! It's been over a year since we did a dedicated mental health episode, so today I'm doing a big catch-up and running through my 7-point plan for being a more mentally secure me. None of this is professional medical advice (I am most definitely not a doctor or therapist — well, actually, I  am  in therapy, but that's tip #5), so take what's useful and leave what isn't. Terms and condi...

Hello friends! I've been on a bit of an AI agent journey lately, and today I'm sharing my experience ditching OpenClaw and going all-in on  Hermes  — a self-hosted AI agent built by  Nous Research . A  Network Chuck video  sold me on it, I wiped my Mac Mini (again), and baby's first Hermes adventure began! Here's what we get into today: Why I left OpenClaw  — After getting the Mac Mini set up, Ope...

Hey friends! Backups are not as cool as pentesting, but boy do they matter when things go sideways. This week I'm sharing how a Proxmox backup disk space meltdown led me to a completely overhauled — and honestly pretty bulletproof — backup setup for both home and work. Claude played a big role in helping me sort it all out. Here's what we get into: The backup history tour  — I've been through Cras...

Hey friends! Today we're going deep on external network pentesting — something I realize we've barely touched in however many episodes we've done. I'm currently in a long stretch of back-to-back external assessments, so it felt like a good time to talk about it. Here's what we get into: Scoping headaches  — why the old "count your public IPs and multiply by a big hourly rate" approach drives me cr...

Hello friends! Today's a hybrid episode — some security content up top about a new certification I've kicked off, followed by an aggressively quick trip to Tangent Town. Feel free to bail after the security stuff if tangents aren't your thing! The security part: starting CARTP I've started the  Certified Azure Red Team Professional  course from Altered Security ( enterprisesecurity.io ). It's the...

Hey friends! Quasi-vacation week over here, so today's episode is lighter and more personal: just a story about how I turned my phone into a " brick " (kind of) and what that's done for my mental health over the past week. The product is called  Brick  ( getbrick.com ). Not sponsored, no discount code — just something I've genuinely been enjoying. It's a $50 NFC dongle + app that lets you "brick"...

Hello friends! Picking up the AI-automation series from a couple weeks back — here's another batch of scripts and integrations that have been giving me precious minutes (and sanity) back. Yes, I had to upgrade to Claude Max. No, I'm not trying to automate myself out of a job — just freeing up bandwidth for the more interesting parts of work/life. QuickBooks invoice automation:  Got tired of the ei...

Hey friends! Today's another Tales of Pentest Pwnage! Quick tangent first on a couple side projects: I've got a music thing at  quack.house  (like the duck noise, not the drug) and a podcast with my dancer son Atticus at  DadOfADancer.com . Speaking of Atticus — he just landed a spot in Master Ballet Academy's summer program in Phoenix, and I am a very proud dance dad over here. OK, on to the pent...

Hey friends! This week's episode is "Baby's First  OpenClaw " – basically me shouting into the void hoping a smart listener will DM me and explain why this thing is supposed to be life-changing. Because right now? I'm a little underwhelmed. Here's the journey so far: The Mac mini quest:  After seeing OpenClaw all over my feeds (people curing diseases! solving crimes!), I caved and impulse-bought a...

Hey friends! After last week's heavy episode about my wife's health scare in Punta Cana, today's is a lighter one. (Quick update: she's doing better – still recovering, but appetite's back and she's got some pep again. Thanks so much to everyone who sent kind messages.) Today I'm gushing about how AI has been making my IT and security life way more efficient: Firewall migration : Had AI walk me th...

Hello friends! Today's episode is a bit of a detour from our usual content — it's part vacation horror story, part security/privacy confession. My wife got seriously ill during our spring break trip to Punta Cana, and in the chaos of navigating a foreign hospital at 2 a.m. with zero sleep and a pile of Spanish medical documents, I threw every privacy best practice I've ever preached straight into...

Today is my favorite pentest pwnage tale of 2026 – and maybe ever!  It centers around an ADCS abuse via an attack path I'd never seen before.  Tips include: Use Netexec to pull  Powershell history Trying to steal reg hives and the EDR is made?  Try copying them out to \\some-other-server.domain.com\share This post  featured interesting use of the Responder  -N option

Hola friends!  Today's another fun tale of pentest pwnage.  This time we started with  no  credentials and then set off on the bumpy journey from no-cred zero to domain admin hero!  One specific reference in today's podcast that may be helpful to you is  setting up ntlmrelayx to listen on port 3128 .

Hello friends!  We're back with a fun tale of internal network pentest pwnage.  This one highlights how AI can be used (with some guardrails!) to automate the boring stuff – and even help you pick part DLLs to find gold nuggets! P.S. – I do recommend you check out our last three episodes that are all about securing your community, and please check out  this Rolling Stone article which will give yo...

Hello friends, in today's edition of How to Secure Your Community, I give a brief recap of  part 1  and  part 2 , and then dive into some cool phone shortcuts you can setup so that with a single tap, you can alert friends/family that you're having an encounter with law enforcement and may need an assist.  Here's the things/links discussed: This great  Rolling Stone article  which features intervie...

Hello friends.  Today's episode piggybacks off of  last week 's discussion of Operation Metro Surge and how it has affected the state of Minnesota.  I also  highly  encourage you to read this  Rolling Stone article  which features interviews and first-hand stories of ICE encounters.  And for those of you asking for a good org to support here in Minnesota, please support  Haven Watch .  They give r...

Hello friends, it's good to be back with you.  I took a podcast hiatus in January to focus on helping communities affected by  Operation Metro Surge .  Today I share how my family and community has been affected by it.  And then in future episodes of this series, I'll get more into some technical nuts and bolts on how to be a more secure community helper – such as tightening up security settings o...

Hi friends, I'm going to be taking a break from producing podcast episodes, as well as content over at  7MinSec.club .  It's a  temporary  break, so please don't unsubscribe, unfollow, etc.  I need some extra time/energy to invest in helping our friends/family/neighbors/communities in the Twin Cities. Important note: our professional services are  not  impacted by this.  If you have security proje...

Hey friends, in episode #649 I gave you my  first impressions of Twingate .  It's been a minute, so I thought I'd revisit Twingate (specifically this awesome  Twingate LXC ) and talk about how we're using it to (almost) entirely replace remote access to our datacenter servers and pentest dropboxes.  Also, don't forget: Our pentest class is coming up at the end of the month – more info  here . We d...

After sharing a recent  story about how a phishing campaign went south , I heard feedback from a  lot  of you.  You either commiserated with my story, told me I wussed out, and/or had a difficult story of your own to share.  So I thought I'd keep this momentum up and share  another story of fail with you – this time about a Web app pentest that went south.

Today we're thrilled to announce the launch of LPLITE:GOAD (Light Pentest Live Interactive Training Experience: Game of Active Directory). The first class is coming up Tuesday, January 27 – Thursday, January 29 (9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. CST each day). More information, pricing information and more can be found at  training.7minsec.com .  Today I talk about who should sign up for the course, what you...

I'm so excited to share today's tale of pentest pwnage, because it brings back to life a coercion technique I thought wouldn't work against Windows 11! Spoiler alert: check out  rpc2efs , as well as the  7MinSec Club episode  we did on the topic this week. Also, our January Light Pentest LITE:GOAD class is open for registration  here !