Getting a lot of boosts from the NaNoWriMo #Aitheft fiasco, so er - hi. Don't have much for cybersecurity (yet), but, er....listen to #TheSojourn audiodrama, maybe?
(P.S. anyone here from #infosectwitter? I lost all my lists in the evacuation/migration 
)
I am proud of myself because today I got my first root shell on a prod network! 
Some of you may remember back when I only dreamed of hacking for my day job. Many people supported me in various ways like by being welcoming and helpful, providing mentorship, and boosting my work/words. #InfosecTwitter (RIP) was a huge part of my journey.
Hey everyone! HaveIBeenPwned is now on Mastodon, at:
I'm impressed with their responsiveness to my request. Make them feel welcome, give them a follow, infosec nerds!
#infosec #infosectwitter #infosecmastodon #tech #technology #security
Given the exodus of accounts from Twitter to Mastodon, as well as its close relationship to the open-source and information security communities, I think you should create a Mastodon account and have it basically, at the very least, reflect what your Twitter account is saying - which is relatively easy to do via tools such as this: https://moa.party/
When was your personal moment that you realized it was time to leave Twitter? What was going through your head — how are you now?
EDIT: Feel free to directly message too. reboosts are appreciated.
#twitter #twitterexodus #twitterrefugee #infosec #infosectwitter #twittermigration
Hey fellow #InfosecTwitter #Twitter refugees, @Em0nM4stodon is an absolutely fabulous account to follow for advice on acclimating to Mastodon.
Oh also if you can, strongly consider financially supporting this thing with a one-time or recurring payment to the link below. Because ads suck.
https://shellsharks.com/mastodon
@mttaggart told me not to, but here it is anyways! Dropping my “take” inline here. Click through the link for all the other resources and deep links.
There is a lot about Mastodon (and the Fediverse) that I have yet to learn, but what I do know is that it has (pretty much) already surpassed what Twitter was to me in both personal and professional contexts. I had a Twitter account for years, and try as I might, I never felt quite comfortable being anything more than a passive consumer - a lurker of those in the #infosectwitter community who had big followings. Though there was of course a decent amount of discussion/engagement within the infosec Twitter world, it often seemed to me very clique-ey, reserved only to those with big followerships or with well-known personas and established circles. I also always had the sense that trying to cultivate a following on Twitter was, sorta cringey. People there seemed more interested in boosting their follower counts or their follower-to-following ratio than expanding their true community. This feeling was ever-perpetuated by the constant deluge of tweets sounding off about how many followers they had, or how close they were to a certain follower threshold, etc…
Look, I get it - I have a blog, a podcast, I understand why people crave followers. It’s the engagement I am after though, not so much just having my tweets/toots/posts/stuff show up in a lot of people’s timelines. I genuinely enjoy sharing my thoughts/ideas, and even moreso hearing/learning from others. Naturally, a good way to create this engagement is to network, follow a lot of people and of course, have others “follow” me. I never had a big following on Twitter (~190ish as of the last time I looked), and I never got much engagement there (partially because I rarely posted). I’ve been on Mastodon for nearly 2 weeks and already I’ve seen much better engagement (and I am not alone). Maybe it’s the novelty factor, or maybe it’s because it hasn’t had time to turn into a toxic stew, it could be because I am more actively engaging. I’m not really sure yet, but what I do know is the vibe is different. That sense of community is definitely there and I am looking to make the most of it.
Alright, so I have a few other thoughts/takes on my Mastodon experience so far, and as I am want to do, I will share via a list!
- As others have pointed out, two reasons why Twitter always felt a bit, icky, was because of forced ads in your timeline and the bedeviling algorithm which fed not what YOU wanted into your timeline, but what Twitter thought would yield maximum engagement, which typically meant trying to fill you with rage. Mastodon is a breath of fresh air in comparison.
- I joined the infosec.exchange instance, which is relatively quite large (~24k and growing) and have followed nearly 400 people so far. What I’ve seen across my home feed and the local timeline has been really great! No ads, literally just what I’ve signed up for. I’ve been consuming/scrolling most of it so far and have encountered a lot of new people and genuinely look forward to (most) of what they have to share.
- Mastodon is a series of unique, networked instances. When folks from other instances are boosted into my timeline, there is a sense of excitement, of exploration. For example, if I see someone with the handle @[email protected], I think “wow! I’m happy to have discovered this indvidual in the wide Fediverse, and look forward to what they post/boost into my timeline”. That hunger to follow, to connect moreso than “get followers” is really great. I have this desire to collect as many cool instances and awesome people as I can into my following list.
- If you want people to follow you, or engage with you, I highly recommend spending some time to tell people what you’re all about in your account profile. Also, toss a picture of some kind in there. Anything will do.
- Each instance will likely have its own culture, traditions and of course rules. Spend some time trying to figure out what those are, and leverage the content warning (CW) feature to try and be a little less offensive. It’s not hard to do!
- Being on an instance which has a population that best shares your personal/professional interests will give you a local timeline that will help you find people to follow and consume your posts. This is true. But! With a little effort, you can, regardless of what instance you are on, curate a following of people across instances, building a home timeline that is perfect for you, void of ads or algorithmic influences. This feed/timeline will continue to grow and mature thanks to the boosts and discussions of those you follow and engage with. So spend less time trying to find the perfect instance, and more time building that list.
If there is any drawback to Mastodon so far that I have seen, it is the lack of full-text search (for privacy reasons). This makes some of the intel-gathering I used to do on Twitter a bit more difficult (I’m not the only one with this sentiment). One frequent use-case was to search for info on CVEs (e.g. PoCs, research, etc…). To address this concern, the infosec community on Mastodon has been putting their heads together on how best to use hashtags to make intel-gathering possible on Mastodon.
This quote from Coffeezilla about how so many Financial Advice / Investor YouTubers got fooled by FTX/BlockFi got me thinking
you shouldn't actually be taking real advice from these peoples who you watch in these screens. They are entertainers and they don't know much more than you about what they're actually selling.
[...]
you cannot take advice from these people. I know the parasocial relationship is there, and you start to feel like maybe they know something, but a lot of them are googling it five minutes before they go live.
How many InfoSec pundits, YouTubers, journalists, etc, will actually bother to download the code from GitHub, look at the code, or test the code vs. just repeating the claims in the README, website, or press release as absolute fact? How many of them are googling the latest vuln announcement five minutes before writing up a blog post, news article, or recording a podcast?
#meta #InfoSecTwitter #InfoSecYouTube
circuit_cat
Tarah Wheeler
Tim Hergert
alexia
Tom Spettigue
Dewey Ritten 
mrjhnsn 
shellsharks
postmodern