RE:BRIEF

Who You See

Daniel Cuthbert

• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-cuthbert0x
• X: https://x.com/dcuthbert

The Grugq

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grugq/
• X: https://x.com/thegrugq

Show Notes

Grain of rice

• Shorthand in the community for sensational, unproven hardware backdoor claims.

Referenced Talks

Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle

• Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek

• Black Hat USA 2015

• https://youtu.be/MAcHkASmXEc?si=3X3jnzCBIS1155i1

MIDImorphosis - Exploiting a Windows 11 Privilege Escalation Vulnerability with a Teensy USB Device

• Andy Davis

• Black Hat Europe 2026 

• https://blackhat.com/europe/briefings/schedule/#midimorphosis---exploiting-a-windows-11-privilege-escalation-vulnerability-with-a-teensy-usb-device-56526 

Phantom Bytes: A Complete Taxonomy of Linux Memory Attacks Against Modern EDR

• Yuan Zhang

• Black Hat Europe 2026

• https://blackhat.com/europe/briefings/schedule/#phantom-bytes-a-complete-taxonomy-of-linux-memory-attacks-against-modern-edr-56754

Defeating Forensic Analysis on Unix

• Thaddeus Grugq

• Phrack Magazine 2002

• https://phrack.org/issues/59/defeating-forensic-analysis-on-unix#article

Remote Exec

• Thaddeus Grugq

• Phrack Magazine 2004

• https://phrack.org/issues/62/remote-exec#article

Vivisection of an Exploit Development Process: What To Do When It's Not Easy

• David Aitel
• Black Hat Europe 2023

• https://blackhat.com/archive/europe/2003/bh-europe-03-speakers.html#David%20Aitel

Professional Source Code Auditing

• Mark Dowd, Halvar Flake, Nishad Herath, Neel Mehta, and Chris Spencer

• Black Hat USA 2002

• https://youtu.be/YceCSBLlelQ?si=C8qhb2M9GcTA-AGt

Why We are Not Building a Defendable Internet

• Halvar Flake

• Black Hat Asia 2017 Keynote

• https://youtu.be/PLJJY5UFtqY?si=nesqa__4D0KQJAzl

00:00 Intro00:14 Fromage-Gate with The Grugq01:28 Industry Lag Since 199004:42 Cheesecake Factory- Early Script Kiddie Era07:03 Curiosity vs Monetization12:36 Reflections on the Early Hacking Community16:01 LLMs Lowering the Barrier, Misuse- Ty & Calif, Anthropic18:27 Absorptive Capacity- What Can be Weaponized 21:44 Notable Black Hat EU Research24:34 Historical Research Worth Revisiting 39:54 Closing and Call to Action