Another year down! That’s three now, and rest assured no plans to quit just yet 🙂

Thanks to everyone for reading and sharing my work. Thanks also to those that have written articles that make this site possible, without others sharing their work this site wouldn’t exist.

I hope that it helps everyone solve cases faster, and share their findings and knowledge. By sharing what we’ve learned we solidify that understanding ourselves, and help others in need. It’s particularly rewarding when you hear that work you have shared has helped someone else crack a case!

So what happened with the site this year and what’s happening next?

Patreon

Patreon support continued to grow, which was very much appreciated. A lot of time and effort goes into this little project of mine, so I really appreciate when people that see a benefit in it throw some pennies at me 🙂 It also helps justify the amount of time (upwards of 12+ hours a week) that goes into it to help spread the word of peoples contributions, and hopefully help others do their job better because of it.

I got some stickers made up for those Patreon folks, and if you’d like one, shoot me a message! You can see one in use here

I also set up a couple of goals, one being a live stream (and subsequent recording) of my “standing out in DFIR” presentation, and the other being trying to add some guests to the podcast to share their opinion. I have a lot more support to gain before I get near them though.

Still turning away advertisers though and trying to fund the whole thing with individual donations.

New Blogs

There were a few new blogs that popped up; some tried to keep up with the daily blogging challenge, but that’s crazy hard so fair enough when life gets in the way. We did see a few other people start writing about stuff that they’re seeing, and that’s always cool.

I decided not to go through and list them out this year because effort, but I’m happy to see more people realising that they have something to share. If you want some help you can always reach out; I’m happy to read through stuff before you hit post, as I’ve done before. I also wrote a couple of posts about how and why you should think about stepping out of the shadows.

Site Trends

Reached over 100k views, and 30k visitors which is more than the last couple of years combined. Pretty happy that more people are coming back and finding the content useful.

A huge proportion of folks are coming from the US, and it looks like it’s more than all the other countries combined.

Lots of clicks for the Cyber Forensicator folks, as well as Hideaki Ihara, and Dave Cowen

And most of the referrals still came from Twitter and Search Engines.

Now that’s all from the blog point of view!

What happened with me?

Lots happened this year!

I spent the first half of year stressing and researching for my upcoming presentations at OpenText Enfuse and SANS DFIR Summit, which were my first conference presentations (being from Australia makes it a bit hard to get over to all the conferences). I presented my research into Google Home Forensics, and also my thoughts on sharing in the DFIR community

I also went to Magnet User Summit, Techno Security Myrtle Beach, and DEFCON where I met a lot of cool people and spent a lot of time inside hotel conference rooms. I competed in a few CTFs (MUS, DEF CON, DFIR NetWars), and managed to place in all of them so came home with a bunch of swag!

I started my journey down the FOR500 mentor/teaching assistant path, where I helped Chad Tilbury in Austin. The week was a lot of fun and we all learned a lot from Chad. It was the second time I’d taken the course in a short period of time and there was new stuff in there already!

As a side note, I will be assisting Ovie Carroll with the FOR500 class in Singapore in March. If you’re going to be there, come say hi!

Lastly, but most importantly, my wife and I welcomed our little bub into the world. It’s taken a bit of getting used to but for the most part, we got a good one, who is as easy-going as her parents.

Whats next?

More of the same really, I’ll be keeping up the blog and podcast throughout the next year. I will be doing a few more links only posts when I need a break, or have to get through other commitments.

Regarding the travel, most of it is up in the air still, I’ll be mainly in Sydney (more DFIR Drinks planned!) with some trips to South East Asia I’m sure, and probably to the States.

I’m thinking of submitting to the SANS DFIR Summit again; this time on Windows 10 DFIR stuff. The next month is going to be doing some basic testing and lit. review. I already have the name, so the hard part is done 🙂 Hopefully I can piece something interesting together that’s worth talking about, and find the time to get all the research for it done.

Wish me luck!