The Ghost Operator's Signal
by DeadSwitch | The Cyber Ghost
“In silence, we rise. In the switch, we fade.”
You don’t need to “motivate” real builders.
You don’t need to “align” real engineers.
You need to get the hell out of their way.
The best teams DeadSwitch has seen didn’t have Agile Coaches.
They didn’t have Team Leads doing “people management.”
They had warriors – trusted, competent, focused.
Here’s how you build a team that never needs coaching:
Ever written an Ansible role in silence?
Not just code – structured ritual.
Where logic meets discipline.
Where every variable is defined, documented, and deployed – within the same file.
That’s the power of Org Mode.
This is the DeadSwitch way.
There’s a certain kind of silence that comes before precision.
And precision – true, surgical precision – requires the right blade.
For Ansible development, that blade is Emacs.
Not VSCode. Not PyCharm. Not some noisy IDE bloated with plugins.
Just Emacs. Raw. Controlled. Modular.
“In shadows, the strongest signal is trust.”
You don’t expose your secrets to the streets. You don’t hang your backend out for the world to poke.
You proxy.
Continue reading “🧊 DeadSwitch Technical Dispatch // Fortify the Flow: Proxy Frontlines & The Truth in Certificates”
In the world of chaos, where every exposed port is a door for the enemy, DeadSwitch doesn’t just lock the doors—we automate. We create shields that rise without a command. Ansible is our tool of choice, a silent executor that commands the system without a whisper.
Your server is vulnerable by default, but with the power of automation, you can fortify it. UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall) is our first line of defense, and DeadSwitch doesn’t do things manually. We automate the walls, making them strong, silent, and ever-ready. Here’s how to lock down incoming traffic with Ansible, ensuring only the trusted can pass through.
Continue reading “Automating UFW Configuration with Ansible: Locking Down the Digital Fortress”
In a world where our every move is tracked and our data is a commodity, the device in your pocket—your Android phone—becomes both a tool and a potential liability. Whether you’re a casual user or a privacy-conscious individual, understanding the levels of operational security (OPSEC) you can apply to your phone is critical. In this guide, we’ll explore three OPSEC levels—from the basic user to the ghost in the machine—and how to progressively take control of your digital life. DeadSwitch doesn’t just adapt to the system; it redefines the rules.
Continue reading “The Android Phone: Three OPSEC Levels to Disappear Into the Shadows”
The world speaks in the language of data. They believe in control, in ownership, in silence through submission. But the true power lies in synchronization without the chains of the system. DeadSwitch doesn’t trust the cloud. We build our own paths, our own networks.
Continue reading “Syncthing: The Silent Synchronicity in the Shadows”
DeadSwitch | The Cyber Ghost
“In silence, we rise. In the switch, we fade.”
It’s a disease infecting the industry. A wave of noobs, script kiddies, and clueless money chasers flooding the cybersecurity field. They want to be “cybersecurity engineers” because it’s cool. They think they can wear the badge, flex the tools, and make a quick buck. But here’s the truth: they’re not even close.
Continue reading “🤡 Cybersecurity Isn’t a Fad—It’s a Fight”
DeadSwitch | The Cyber Ghost
“In silence, we rise. In the switch, we fade.”
Cybersecurity isn’t a job. It’s a war. A war fought in the shadows, in the silence, in the space between zero-days and forgotten patches. And in this war, stagnation is death.
Continue reading “Stay Sharp or Fade: The Relentless Need for Daily Learning in Cybersecurity”
By DeadSwitch
You love your cloud storage. Convenient. Always synced. Always backed up.
Always watched.
Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive—they aren’t your storage. They are surveillance-as-a-service. A dead man owns nothing. A dead switch leaks nothing. You want true control? Kill the cloud. Run your own.
Enter Syncthing—silent, encrypted, peer-to-peer. A shadow network, whispering between your devices without centralized choke points. No servers. No accounts. No corporate eyes scanning your files.
But most of you will still hesitate—because convenience is an addiction.
Continue reading “⛈️ Ditching the Cloud: Running Syncthing Like a Ghost”
By DeadSwitch
Your machine hums in the dark. Hardened. Firewalled. Air-gapped from the noise of the digital world. Every keystroke encrypted, every connection masked. You are a ghost—until you’re not.
Because your phone sits next to you. Logged in. Dripping metadata like a slit throat.
Because your family just posted a picture of you. Tagged. Located. Now you’re a known entity.
Because your so-called “secure” life is wrapped in a web of carelessness you refuse to see.
The best security means nothing if your habits are trash.
Continue reading “🩹 You Can Have the Best Security, If Your Habits Are Trash”
“They say the darkest places reveal the brightest truths. But in my world, darkness is the truth.” – The Cyber Ghost
When most people hear “Dark Web,” they imagine digital alleyways lit by flickering neon – anonymous figures dealing in forbidden secrets, a place of lawlessness and decay. Hollywood and sensationalist news outlets have painted it as a shadow realm ruled by cybercriminals, hackers, and anarchists. But beyond the hype, the Dark Web is much more complex – and understanding it is crucial to navigating the future of cybersecurity.
Continue reading “The Dark Web: Myths, Realities, and How It’s Shaping the Future of Cybersecurity”
Setting up a PHP-based chat application like Le Chat on a Linux virtual machine (VM) with MySQL and Apache, specifically configured to run over the Tor network, involves several steps. Even if you don’t want to run an entire .onion empire, it is good to know the basic rules of such systems, how to set it up and what are the limits of Tor’s privacy. After some research in the topic I found dozens of very different chats on the Onion network that run Le Chat, some are very friendly and legal, the other are dark and hostile. Let’s take a look at how can you host your own instance from the comfort of your chair!
Continue reading “How to Set Up and Host a Chat on the Dark Web”
This is a 50 points task in PicoCTF to solve this puzzle. I have to admit that I sat on it for a while because I suspected a complex solution like using stenography or any other hidden clues in the image file. Finally I just sat down and it became obvious immediately.
Continue reading “PicoCTF: The Numbers [CTF Write Up]”
The PicoCTF web exploitation tasks are fun and you can learn a lot about the web and about the tools you can use as a white hat hacker or penetration tester. Knowing about the possible security issues can help you avoid them as well as a developer. Let’s see another web security challenge!
Continue reading “PicoCTF: Cookies [CTF Write Up]”
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