What will this blog be about and why.
It will be about cryptocurrencies. Why? Because I strongly believe that most of the evils of this world stem from the fact that financial institutions have too much power. They own us and they can break us, as they almost did in 2008. Their greed destroyed lives, it left people without jobs, without houses and without hope. And we were powerless. I believe this needs to change. And I believe cryptocurrencies are the answer.
The future, our future is digital, we can all agree on this. And one of the main aspects of today's society is money. I believe that fixing our financial system will certainly mean a brighter future for humanity. Decentralisation is the key for a trustworthy and transparent global economy. And we desperately need that now.
TL;DR: Although the next lines might make me sound like a condescending prick, I am an IT passionate guy with extensive hacking background. I've written the next paragraphs with personal information for those who need more details and official confirmation regarding my credentials. Understandable, I wouldn't trust the word of a random guy on the Internet that appears to have a superiority complex. This blog will be about my journey through the Peercoin cryptocurrency world.
Who I am
I graduated in France a few years ago with an engineering diploma in telecommunications and a master's degree in cryptography and computer security. I now work as an IT security consultant specialised in mobile applications, network infrastructure and web applications. Basically, I have pretty much the same job as Edward Snowden did before his abrupt departure, except I like to believe I work for 'the good guys' (i.e not the NSA). It is therefore my job to break into servers, compromise networks, hack applications and so on. My targets are not citizens or individuals but infrastructures and applications that people use on a daily basis. I do this at the request of the people who own and develop all these products. The purpose of my work is to find vulnerabilities and report them back to the clients before the 'bad guys' find them and exploit them for fun and/or profit. To sum it up, my job is to try and protect the users from attackers.
Now, apart from my job I am (or was) also deeply involved into several other things:
- Hacking Challenges (2006 - 2012)
I was part of the hacking challenge scene and also created a hacking challenge website called dareyourmind.net. This website is what we would call a hacking 'sandbox', a place where people can learn and develop hacking skills. Nowadays there are thousands of websites like this around (check out www.wechall.net), most of them much better than DareYourMind. This website was my very first creation. It took a few years to get it all done but I learned a lot from this project.
I'm now retired from this scene, mainly because challenges are part of my work on a daily basis and let's face it... there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. My daily challenges are also now more real, more immersive and out of the sandbox environment.
- Hackintosh (2006 - Present)
Hackintoshes are basically computers built with non-standard Apple hardware and modified to run MacOS. I got into this when Apple made the switch from PowerPC to Intel processors (which made the task much easier to achieve). I did quite a few things for the Hackintosh community such as modifying or patching drivers (kext), creating tutorials and so on. I never officially left the community but things are now much easier than they were before (thanks to the excellent CLOVER EFI bootloader).
- Jailbreak (2010 - Present)
Most of my work on the Jailbreak scene is public. In 2012 I created a tool that allows Android phones to steal data from iOS phones by interconnecting the two phones with a USB cable. This tool uses the well-known limera1n exploit of the genius jailbreaker George Hotz. This tool developed from scratch in C, that is called irona1l is now opensource. If you want to know more about it I invite you to go on ironha1l.thireus.com.
I also have my own Cydia repository on which you can find some of my tweaks, the most famous one being called "Untrusted Hosts Blocker". If you want to know more about my repository you are welcome to visit repo.thireus.com.
- Cryptocurrencies (2013 - Present)
I mined my very first Bitcoin in 2013 but had heard about it the year before. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are an incredible piece of technology and it combines most of my hobbies, projects and knowledge: cryptography, security, IT, trading, network, challenges, etc. Getting into cryptocurrencies was for me the normal step as it fits perfectly with who I am, what I believe in and what I do.
- Password cracking (2012 - Present)
Password cracking is one of the activities that IT security consultants are normally lead to do in their job. We often dump databases which contain credentials that we need to crack because passwords are hashed. I started by doing some research on the topic, later joined by my friend m3g9tr0n, who is an excellent password cracker. Together we released several articles (well-read at the time) that you can find here. Password cracking and Bitcoin mining are two different things but when you think about it, they both require the same knowledge and determination.
Why Peercoin
I got into Peercoin because I wasn't satisfied about Bitcoin's technology which is exclusively based on Proof-of-Work. And because I think it's always best to stick to the cryptocurrency that directly emerged from Bitcoin (and not a fork of a fork of a fork). I do believe Peercoin has the potential of making Proof-of-Stake mainstream.
Peercoin was also to me a better way of understanding Bitcoin and the problems surrounding this technology. Peercoin's blockchain is small and its community very friendly. These aspects are very helpful in order to have a good start into learning about cryptocurrencies.
Why I'm doing this
I will post here several articles about Peercoin that will have as a main focus exposing some aspects regarding this cryptocurrency and its network. You will read here about security and research: the good, the bad and the ugly things.
I hope you will find this blog useful and/or an interesting read.
