Insert Here Joke About The 'S' In IoT: ___________

                    ─ Anne Rice

            "One moment the world is as it is. The next, it is something entirely different. Something it has never been before."


忍耐 (Nintai) – Endurance & Patience

Life has its twists, turns, tugs, and takes, right?

Lately, I’ve been (kind of) ‘forced’ to plunge into radio waves—5GHz, 2.4GHz, channel allocations, and even how certain countries restrict radio some frequencies.

"Woah, so new job and you got more free time to explore stuff?"

No. Not really.

If anything, I have less free time than ever. Firewalls, network congestion, MAC virtualization, plus remembering things I learned over a year ago, while picking up new tricks along the way. But here’s the thing—I get to manage my time better (to a point). 

Not because the workload is lighter, far from it.

The difference? I’m not buried neck-deep under tickets every minute of my working day. Instead of having problems chase me around nonstop, I carve out specific windows to troubleshoot, test, and develop strategies─tackling issues before they spiral out of control. And when the odd danger moment does come up, I can devote my time and energy to it.

A three-hour troubleshoot session? No problem. An endless stream of tickets for three hours? That drains the life out of you.

Drop by drop.

So, I decided to get my hands dirty and learn a bit about IoT hacking. Why the hell not?

I didn't get the luxury of studying computer science or electrical (or-anything-very-technical-really) engineering for 3 years in college─on the other hand, that gave me the privilege of carving out my own study program, and avoiding dumb, mandatory courses.

I started with this Defcon32 talk, which was surprisingly accessible, straight to the point, and fun. After that, I picked a target, got some basic tools, and started tinkering.

                "Nice IoT you got there, friend. T'would be a shame if something happened to it..."

It's not about going uber deep on this, it's about understanding a bit more about the field, getting our hands dirty and seeing if anything clicks. Also, you never know when any of this might come in useful.

Never in my life have I ever wanted to become a DB engineer, or backend mantainer, but I don't know how many times it has been extremely useful to know how to query a DB or create a View.

And always: The journey is the fun part.

Meanwhile, I've been chipping away at Practical Malware Analysis (yikes, he likes books!) but I'm saving that for later. I'll need some time to organize my notes and scribblings into something half-decent, before that becomes a blog post.

Honestly, I kind of envy the people who seem to have all the time in the world to write massive, in-depth blog posts. How do they do it? I guess, like anything else, it comes down to practice—it gets easier the more you do it.

I'm lucky if I manage to put out one of these out every so often.

But hey─if you're deep into your own projects, I hope you're having fun.