Technical Notes & Systems Architecture

Deep technical documentation on network forensics, self-hosted hypervisor infrastructure, embedded hardware exploitation, and minimal Unix tool design.

dev-blog@system:~$ grep -i 5 dispatches loaded

// FEATURED WRITE-UP 01

2026-07-20 • 8 MIN READ

[PINNED RESEARCH] ~/notes/iot-firmware-spi-extraction.md

> Reverse Engineering IoT Firmware: SPI Flash Extraction

In security audits of embedded systems, retrieving the firmware is the critical first step. When over-the-air updates are encrypted and debug ports (UART, JTAG) are disabled in production silicon, dumping physical SPI Flash memory becomes necessary. This writeup covers extracting firmware from an 8-pin SOP SPI flash chip using a Bus Pirate and flashrom.

extract_firmware.sh POSIX sh

# Query the SPI flash details using flashrom via Bus Pirate
flashrom -p buspirate_spi:dev=/dev/ttyUSB0,spispeed=1M -r firmware_dump.bin

# Verify the integrity of the binary dump by comparing hashes
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "Dump successful. Running md5sum..."
  md5sum firmware_dump.bin
fi

[#firmware] [#hardware] [#security] [#bus-pirate] READ WRITEUP [8 MIN] →

// FEATURED WRITE-UP 02

2026-07-15 • 12 MIN READ

[INFRASTRUCTURE SPEC] ~/notes/ha-traefik-docker.md

> Building a High-Availability Traefik Router with Docker Compose

Architecting automated TLS wildcard certificate propagation, Docker provider label routing, zero-downtime container updates, and backend health-check failover routes on bare-metal infrastructure.

traefik-compose.yml YAML

services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:v3.1
    command:
      - "--providers.docker=true"
      - "--entrypoints.websecure.address=:443"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.cf.acme.dnschallenge=true"

[#homelab] [#docker-traefik] [#networking] READ WRITEUP [12 MIN] →

// SYSTEMS & SCRIPTING DISPATCH

2026-07-10 • 6 MIN READ

[STANDARDS & COMPLIANCE] ~/notes/posix-sh-vs-bash.md

> POSIX sh vs. Bash: Portability in Modern Scripts

Analyzing edge-case incompatibilities, syntax overhead, eliminating bashisms, and writing fast, bulletproof bootstrapping scripts for Alpine and embedded targets conforming to IEEE Std 1003.1.

[#posix-sh] [#shell] [#unix] READ WRITEUP [6 MIN] →

// CURATED TRACKS

SPECIALIZATIONS

Embedded Silicon & Hardware

[1 ARTICLE • BUS PIRATE]

Physical chip extraction, UART/JTAG probing, SPI dump validation.

Self-Hosted Infrastructure

[2 ARTICLES • TRAEFIK & WIREGUARD]

Automated edge routing, zero-trust overlay networks, VLAN firewalls.

Low-Level Binary Exploitation

[1 ARTICLE • GLIBC HEAP]

Memory allocator internals, tcache safe-linking mangling bypass.

Zero-Allocation Tooling

[1 ARTICLE • POSIX SH]

High-throughput logging, shell parser ASTs, minimalist runtimes.

// CTF & SECURITY WIRE

REPORTS

2026-06-28 • 15 min read > CTF Write-up: Heap Exploitation in glibc 2.35

Deconstructing tcache safe-linking pointer mangling, bypass primitives, and House of Apple file structure hijacking.

                [#ctf] [#binary-exploitation]
              

2026-06-14 • 10 min read > Zero-Trust Network Isolation with WireGuard & OPNsense VLANs

Designing strict zone-based firewall rules across isolated VLANs with point-to-point WireGuard cryptographic routing.

                [#networking] [#wireguard]
              