Hackers IRL

Panda from Assura gets slammed with 20,000 hits from China across multiple sites, pulls the secret-rotation lever, and watches attackers waste their time on fake credentials in a honeypot.

Panda with Assura shares a quick tip for trying Anthropic's new Fable model before it leaves plan usage: drop your old context, skip the hacker jargon, and start a completely fresh session.

Panda from Assura vents about a nerfed Fable that keeps flagging work and dropping to Opus, wishes for Mythos access, and jokes about the age-verification internet. Plus a chill 4th with a fireworks-shy dog.

Panda walks through restoring a GTE Fortress payphone from Atlanta's streets, fitting a 96 Olympics vault door, drilling out the locks, and wiring it up next to his living room chair alongside the B-Sides phone challenge PBX.

Panda visits an Atlantis-themed escape room with friends, then solves a puzzle in a way the room never anticipated, forcing the game host to walk him around the building to continue.

Panda from Assura talks about the day Claude went down, why he builds across multiple frontier models with human interfaces, and the projects he's dogfooding: LeetPage, and ConventionBase. Links: LeetPage.com ConventionBase.com

Panda from Assura walks through a wild AI week: Mythos and Fable 5 pulled after a jailbreak prompted government intervention, Claude -p usage charges rolled back, and what it all signals about the race.

Panda checks in from SecureIdeas at the PickJax Locksport meetup, riffing on Lishi tools, Schuyler Towne‘s DEFCON 19 talk on the BIC-pen kryptonite fiasco, and how cost-cutting cost tubular locks their reputation. Links: https://youtu.be/ChbyaXBKNY8?is=aMqEmrF_SZFGZ1JU Shoutouts: Schuyler Towne, Travis Phillips, Jennifer Shannon, SecureIdeas, PickJax

Panda from Assura calls in from the Richmond Marriott after a wild day at RVASec, where their team took first in Roman Bohuk’s MetaCTF (now Skillbit) and talks about why CTFs are really about learning, not winning. Shoutouts: SSHad0w, Errant Packet, Matt Brown, Roman Bohuk, Skillbit, Kataze, ISACA, RVASec

Panda from Assura calls in from outside the Marriott at RVASec in downtown Richmond, tired but having a blast, prepping the Curious Corvids for tomorrow's CTF. Shoutouts: Errant Packet, Curious Corvids, RVASec, Skillbit (Formerly MetaCTF)

Panda calls in from a Florida beach walk with the puppy, getting ready for the long drive up to RVAsec. He riffs on the DEF CON data duplication village, the InfoCon.org talk archive, and a weekend project using AI to sort old con talks into Plex. Links: InfoCon.org

Panda phones in from the monthly JAX2600 / DC904 meetup, talks about AI controls at work, homemade antennas, cognitive security, and what is coming next for Hackers IRL. Shoutouts: Bruno, Cognitive Security Institute, JAX2600, DC904, RVASec

Panda from Assura talks through the pre-trip anxiety that hits before every con or vacation, how he reframes nerves as a sign he cares, and learning to ship early over chasing perfect.

Panda from Assura unwinds at the Jacksonville Linux User Group, catches Champ Clark demo JSONAir, and shares how a childhood therapist became the first person to ever listen to them nerd out about Linux. Shoutouts: Champ Clark, Key9 Security

Panda from Assura walks his dog and riffs on how AI has tanked the value of secret-sauce IP, why the real moat is just doing, and why vibe-coded apps still need real security testing.

her0x0ftime calls in on his morning drive to share how early vulnerability management work mirrored his recovery journey, and how the endless scan-and-patch cycle pushed him to rethink what security really means. Shoutouts: Panda

Panda talks about frontier models quietly profiling who you are before answering, the lockpick-letterhead parallel, debug-mode jailbreaks, and worries about who gets gated out of learning infosec.

Panda shares a Sunday note about handling a quarter million daily bot requests on his sites, the limits of Cloudflare's verified-bot signal, and how GEO is the new SEO. Shoutouts: BSidesTampa

Panda introduces hackingplaybook.com and the new awesomeplaybooks.com format for open source courseware for operators going out of their comfort zone. Contribute today on GitHub! Shoutouts: MeshTastic, Awesomelists Links: hackingplaybook.com · awesomeplaybooks.com · JaxMesh.com

Panda recounts an uncomfortable moment at HackSpaceCon, where second-place finishers argued for a black badge they hadn't earned, and reflects on why you should play the game for the game. Shoutouts: TeleChallenge, PhreakMe, DEFCON

Panda calls in driving home through Florida storms after HackSpaceCon, recapping Tim Fowler's satellite hacking class and the analog telephone game he ran, which the Manta Rays swept for 900 points. Shoutouts: Christian, Tim Fowler, The Manta Rays

her0x0ftime, also known as Cameron, calls in from a hotel room post-HackspaceCon. He sits with the exhaustion, the goodbyes, and what it means to be vulnerable by design. Shoutouts: Panda

Panda calls in from Kennedy Space Center on day one of HackSpaceCon, sharing shoutouts to speakers, a freeze-dried ice cream break, and an invitation for more listeners to call in. Shoutouts: Karen Gibson, Anubis, Kevin Tackett, Tim Fowler, David Girvin

Panda calls in from HackSpaceCon near Kennedy Space Center, recapping Tim Fowler's satellite hacking class where students intercepted telemetry and took over CubeSats with software-defined radios. Shoutouts: Tim Fowler, Ethos Labs

Panda from Assura Incorporated checks in from day one of HackSpaceCon, running wiring through a construction site in AT&T gear, prepping training classes, and looking forward to satellite hacking and the pool. Shoutouts: SnackSpaceCon.com HackSpaceCon.com