João Pedro Dias

A World of Blinkenlights

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is this scene in WarGames (1983, which I have watched an embarrassing number of times) where a teenage hacker’s modem connects to what he thinks is a games company. It’s actually the War Operation Plan Response (WORP) computer and the big screen fills with a world map: bombers, submarines,...

Beyond Context Windows: When Malware Stops Fitting into Naive Automated Analysis

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Another fun ride with a malware sample from out there in the wild. As is often the case, it all starts with yet another fake overdue bill reminder. This one contains a VBS script that uses string-splitting, Chr() arithmetic, and multi-variable Base64 encoding to deliver a 111 MB Delphi PE...

VoicePress5: Tracing a Phishing-to-Java RAT Infection Chain

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Another day, another not so boring phishing attempt. This time let’s dive into the analysis of a phishing attempt against a Portuguese volunteer association with a multi-hop infection chain designed to bypass most email phishing scanners.

Spreading the Bait

The email is being spread using a trusted Spanish...

Plywood Trojan: When Attackers Go Budget

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’m always amused by the smell of a fresh phishing email in the morning. And this time, a closer to home one, as I know the target company since I have a friend working there, namely, Uphold. So let’s dive right in.

Disclaimer: Uphold is not in any...

Hardware Hacking 101 Village - Post-Mortem

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On June 14, 2025, I organized a hardware hacking focused village as part of the ØxＯＰＯＳɆＣ Hack Day, and this is a post-mortem analysis of the village, focusing on some of the observations and common mishaps, and how to improve your journey in the hardware hacking world, especially from a...

How to Run Your Own Weather Station

Fri, 02 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Some months ago I decided to finally acquire a weather station. Nothing fancy, just a cheap enough, no frills, weather station. As I wanted to have the least amount of trouble setting it up, I bought a WiFi-enabled unit, in a way I could stream the data, somehow, via Internet....

From a NAS to a full-fledge homelab with spare parts

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

It all started with a QNAP NAS to backup my raw photography’s and have some way to store other media files. Then some smart home devices randomly appeared. And then some enhancements needed to be done to a proper way to stream audio and video to my LG ~~dumb~~ smart...

Hardware Hacking and Research Toolbox Inventory

Sun, 05 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired by the blogpost My Red Team assessment hardware by David Sopas this post describes hardware tools that I have in my inventory, their purpose as well as the features/firmwares/tricks that motivated me to buy them. This is not intended to be an exhaustively detailed list, but I...

OPOSEC XMAS CTF Challenge Christmas 2022 Write-up

Tue, 11 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I guess it is better late than never, so almost four months after the closing of the OPOSEC XMAS CTF Challenge Christmas 2022 this is my write-up on how I did manage to solve all the challenges and finish in the 4^th place.

There was a total of...

Portuguese Cybersecurity Competition CTF Write-up

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Some weeeks ago I’ve participated in the “Portuguese Cybersecurity Competition” organized by InvestAmarante and powered by hackrocks. Given that this was a begginer friendly (maybe too friendly…) Capture The Flag competition there were no major learning takeways, but it is always useful to pratice some old tricks and...