https://hackwithskr.com/blog Field notes on VAPT, SOC operations, AI/LLM security and cloud defense by Sudhakar Reddy. en https://hackwithskr.com/blog/mobile-malware-stay-safer https://hackwithskr.com/blog/mobile-malware-stay-safer GUIDE Spyware, banking trojans and sideloaded RATs — how modern mobile malware lands on a device, the tools that detect it, and the habits that keep you off the target list. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/phishing-defense-that-works https://hackwithskr.com/blog/phishing-defense-that-works GUIDE AiTM kits, QR 'quishing' and callback scams beat old training. What actually lowers real risk: phishing-resistant auth, a detonation layer on the inbox, and drills that mirror current tradecraft. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/splunk-real-time-detection-tips https://hackwithskr.com/blog/splunk-real-time-detection-tips TIP SPL patterns, accelerated data models and tstats tricks that turn a slow, noisy Splunk into a near-real-time detection engine — with snippets you can paste in today. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/edr-tuning-crowdstrike-and-beyond https://hackwithskr.com/blog/edr-tuning-crowdstrike-and-beyond TIP Deploying an EDR is easy; making it stop attacks without drowning analysts is the work. Staged prevention policy, environment-specific custom detections, and real-time response done right. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/recon-toolkit-nmap-nessus-wireshark https://hackwithskr.com/blog/recon-toolkit-nmap-nessus-wireshark TUTORIAL The flags, scan policies and capture filters that separate a fast, accurate assessment from a slow, noisy one — three heavy tools chained into one discovery-to-evidence loop. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/vapt-project-end-to-end https://hackwithskr.com/blog/vapt-project-end-to-end BLOG The workflow I actually follow on a network + Active Directory engagement — scoping, recon, exploitation, lateral movement, reporting and retest — with the tools and a sanitized findings sample. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/api-pentest-project https://hackwithskr.com/blog/api-pentest-project BLOG REST and GraphQL APIs fail on authorization and business logic far more than on injection. The workflow, the tooling, and a sanitized sample of what usually comes back. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/mobile-pentest-project https://hackwithskr.com/blog/mobile-pentest-project BLOG Static analysis, Frida instrumentation, pinning bypass, local storage and the backend tie-in — the mobile engagement workflow and a sanitized findings sample. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-assisted-security-findings https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-assisted-security-findings DEEP DIVE Where an LLM genuinely speeds up offensive and defensive work — code review, SPL generation, deobfuscation, YARA drafting — where it confidently lies, and a sample of what it surfaced on real reviews. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/harden-cloud-5-steps https://hackwithskr.com/blog/harden-cloud-5-steps TIP A practical checklist to lock down AWS, Azure and GCP workloads before attackers find the gaps. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/prompt-injection-llm-risk https://hackwithskr.com/blog/prompt-injection-llm-risk GUIDE How indirect prompt injection turns helpful AI into an attacker tool — and how to defend against it. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/day-in-the-life-soc https://hackwithskr.com/blog/day-in-the-life-soc BLOG From the first SIEM alert to incident closure — what L1/L2/L3 actually looks like in practice. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/reverse-engineering-loaders https://hackwithskr.com/blog/reverse-engineering-loaders RESEARCH Unpacking obfuscated stage-1 malware and extracting IOCs the right way. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/advanced-burp-wapt https://hackwithskr.com/blog/advanced-burp-wapt TUTORIAL Beyond the scanner — custom extensions, intruder payloads, and out-of-band tricks for real engagements. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/defending-llm-jailbreaks https://hackwithskr.com/blog/defending-llm-jailbreaks DEEP DIVE Guardrail strategies, red-team patterns, and why most "safe" prompts are still breakable. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/bug-bounty-recon-pipeline https://hackwithskr.com/blog/bug-bounty-recon-pipeline TUTORIAL Automated subdomain discovery, fingerprinting and vulnerability triage that finds bugs while you sleep. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/kubernetes-attack-paths https://hackwithskr.com/blog/kubernetes-attack-paths DEEP DIVE From a single pod compromise to full cluster takeover — the chains every defender must understand. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/active-directory-quick-wins https://hackwithskr.com/blog/active-directory-quick-wins TIP Practical hardening that closes the attack paths red teams actually use. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/soc-detection-engineering https://hackwithskr.com/blog/soc-detection-engineering GUIDE How to write detections that catch real attackers without drowning the SOC in false positives. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/api-security-top-10 https://hackwithskr.com/blog/api-security-top-10 GUIDE BOLA, broken auth, mass assignment — the API bugs that show up on every engagement and how to test for them. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/zero-trust-practical https://hackwithskr.com/blog/zero-trust-practical BLOG What zero trust actually looks like in a mid-size company — identity, device posture, and segmentation that ship. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/mobile-app-pentest-checklist https://hackwithskr.com/blog/mobile-app-pentest-checklist TUTORIAL iOS and Android static + dynamic testing, from cert pinning bypass to insecure storage and IPC abuse. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/phishing-resistant-mfa https://hackwithskr.com/blog/phishing-resistant-mfa TIP Why TOTP and SMS keep getting bypassed — and the FIDO2 rollout playbook that finally stops AiTM kits. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/secrets-management-quick-wins https://hackwithskr.com/blog/secrets-management-quick-wins TIP Stop the .env sprawl: practical patterns to kill hardcoded keys without rewriting your stack. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/supply-chain-attacks-2026 https://hackwithskr.com/blog/supply-chain-attacks-2026 GUIDE From typosquats to malicious maintainers — how to lock down npm, PyPI and container dependencies. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/container-image-hardening https://hackwithskr.com/blog/container-image-hardening GUIDE Distroless, non-root, read-only filesystems and the runtime controls that actually stop escapes. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/burnout-blue-team https://hackwithskr.com/blog/burnout-blue-team BLOG Honest notes on alert fatigue, on-call rotations, and the cultural changes that keep good analysts. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/first-90-days-security-lead https://hackwithskr.com/blog/first-90-days-security-lead BLOG A pragmatic plan for new heads of security — what to measure, what to ignore, what to ship. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ransomware-affiliate-tradecraft https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ransomware-affiliate-tradecraft RESEARCH What this year's leaked playbooks tell us about initial access, dwell time and double extortion patterns. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-agent-attack-surface https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-agent-attack-surface RESEARCH Tool-using LLM agents create new privilege paths — here's how to model and test them. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/writing-yara-rules-that-scale https://hackwithskr.com/blog/writing-yara-rules-that-scale TUTORIAL From one-off IOCs to a tunable detection corpus your SOC can run on every file in the estate. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ad-pentest-with-bloodhound-ce https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ad-pentest-with-bloodhound-ce TUTORIAL Collection, ingestion and the Cypher queries I run on every internal engagement. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ebpf-for-detection https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ebpf-for-detection DEEP DIVE Where eBPF actually wins for runtime security — and where the marketing oversells it. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/modern-edr-evasion https://hackwithskr.com/blog/modern-edr-evasion DEEP DIVE Direct syscalls, indirect syscalls, unhooking, hardware breakpoints — what red teams ship and what catches it. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-cybersecurity-2026-vs-2016 https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-cybersecurity-2026-vs-2016 DEEP DIVE From signature-based AV and rule-based SIEMs to autonomous agents on both sides of the fight — a decade-in-review and what's next. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/post-quantum-crypto-migration https://hackwithskr.com/blog/post-quantum-crypto-migration DEEP DIVE Harvest-now-decrypt-later is real. Here's the practical roadmap for moving to ML-KEM and ML-DSA without breaking production. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/osint-recon-red-team https://hackwithskr.com/blog/osint-recon-red-team TUTORIAL From employee footprints to leaked credentials — the open-source recon that turns into a phishing pretext or an initial-access plan. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/purple-teaming-that-works https://hackwithskr.com/blog/purple-teaming-that-works GUIDE Why most purple team exercises end in a slide deck instead of a shipped detection — and how to fix that. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/genai-data-leakage-dlp https://hackwithskr.com/blog/genai-data-leakage-dlp GUIDE Employees are pasting source code and customer data into public chatbots. Here's the DLP and policy stack that actually stops it. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-security-tips-you-can-ship-today https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-security-tips-you-can-ship-today TIP No budget, no new headcount — the fastest wins for locking down whatever LLM features your team already shipped. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/new-attacker-tooling-2026 https://hackwithskr.com/blog/new-attacker-tooling-2026 RESEARCH From AI-assisted C2 frameworks to auto-weaponized N-days — a look at what's trading on criminal forums this year. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-app-firewall-llm-defense https://hackwithskr.com/blog/ai-app-firewall-llm-defense DEEP DIVE Rate limits and prompt filters aren't enough anymore — the architecture for a real defense layer in front of your models. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/digital-forensics-autopsy-recovery https://hackwithskr.com/blog/digital-forensics-autopsy-recovery TUTORIAL From a forensically sound disk image to a defensible timeline — running a real investigation and data recovery with the open-source Autopsy platform. https://hackwithskr.com/blog/mobile-forensics-ufed-autopsy-passware https://hackwithskr.com/blog/mobile-forensics-ufed-autopsy-passware TUTORIAL Extracting a phone, cracking the encrypted container, and analyzing everything in one timeline — how three forensic tools chain together on a real case.