Network Security

How to respond to a network intrusion: capture evidence from an exploited VPN or firewall before patching, treat credentials that passed through it as stolen, decide what to isolate and how far, and recover from a domain compromise.

HIDS vs NIDS: the difference between host-based and network-based intrusion detection, what each sees and misses, plus IDS vs IPS and detection methods.

Port 445 runs SMB over TCP for Windows file sharing; port 139 is legacy SMB over NetBIOS. Why both are high-risk (WannaCry) and how to lock them down.

A clear explainer on UPnP (Universal Plug and Play): what it does, how automatic port forwarding works, why exposed UPnP is a serious router security risk, the difference between internal and WAN-facing UPnP, and when and how to disable it safely.

A clear explainer on hidden and anonymous proxy servers: what they are, how attackers and insiders use them to evade security controls, the data-exfiltration and command-and-control risks they create, and the egress filtering and detection techniques that surface them.

A clear explainer on the categories of denial-of-service attacks: volumetric, protocol and application-layer, plus amplification and reflection techniques and the botnets behind DDoS, and the layered mitigations — rate limiting, upstream scrubbing, CDN and WAF — that absorb them.

A plain-English explainer on man-in-the-middle attacks: what they are, how they work (ARP spoofing, rogue Wi-Fi, DNS spoofing, SSL stripping, adversary-in-the-middle phishing kits), the main attack classes, and the defenses that actually stop them — TLS and HSTS, certificate validation, VPNs on untrusted networks, phishing-resistant MFA, mutual TLS and DNSSEC.

A beginner-friendly guide to network security fundamentals: segmentation, firewalls, zero trust, monitoring, and the common controls that protect a modern network.

CVE-2026-76460 is a CVSS 10.0 authentication bypass in Cisco ISE, under active exploitation with no workaround. Affected versions, patches, and detection.