After a 14-year career serving the U.S. public sector in various roles to include supporting Information Operations and Cyber Warfare, Danny now works as a Senior Information Security Advisor at SecureWorks’ Security Center of Excellence (SCoE) in Bucharest. His skillset includes digital forensics, threat intelligence, malware analysis, and he is additionally working towards Offensive Security.

He is also a member of the DeadPixelSecurity community and is in the Blue Team Village, serving as a mentor and as part of the Forensics crew. Outside of the Security field, Danny is working on a passion video game project as the Fearless Leader of the Sacred Star Team and is fond of fantasy tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D).

Curse of the Mirage Forest: An Incident Responder’s Tale

Threat actors continually improve on their ingenuity on staging ambushes, like bandits within a dense forest. Whereas the typical entry of breaches start with phishing, the more clever tricksters cloak their trap through a Mirage spell within a simple clearing, enticing unsuspecting business that failed their Insight check to claim a trojanized program. These traps are aided through Google Analytics, which has made navigating the Illusionary Forest for the right path require a DC 25 roll. Grab your d20 and join one adventurer as he shares his tale of tricksters that leverage services through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) manipulation and Google Adword abuse. The tale will include a close-call encounter with the adversary in an incident response call, how they tracked the bandit’s trail, and share the ways that other adventurer can follow-suit in using available free services for threat intelligence to aid crafting their own tales.