Hello friends! Today’s a hybrid episode — some security content up top about a new certification I’ve kicked off, followed by an aggressively quick trip to Tangent Town. Feel free to bail after the security stuff if tangents aren’t your thing!

The security part: starting CARTP

I’ve started the Certified Azure Red Team Professional course from Altered Security (enterprisesecurity.io). It’s the Azure follow-up to CRTP, which I took a few years back. Quick notes:

• Why now: Active Directory and internal pentests will always be my first love, but more and more of our customers are shifting to hybrid or full-Azure environments. Time to get some formal training in that lane.
• Self-paced vs. live: They offer both. I’m past the point of giving up Saturdays to security training, so I went with the ~$500 self-paced 30-day option. You get a portal, a lab manual, and a remote Windows VM with low-priv creds into a target Azure tenancy to attack and enumerate.
• The catch: The lab manual is thorough on “do this, see this output” steps, but light on “and here’s the wow moment hiding in line 47 of the output.” With the live class, an instructor would highlight that stuff in real time. In the self-paced version, you’re on your own to find the meaning in 200 lines of output.
• The fix: Started a Claude project that’s effectively co-teaching the class with me. I paste command output and ask “what’s the important bit here?” — Claude pulls out the line that matters and explains why (e.g., “this user has write access to a key vault, which means…”). Way more efficient than ALT-TABbing alone.
• Tools I’ve touched so far: ROADtools, GraphRunner, and Monkey365 (kind of a PingCastle-for-Azure that spits out a health-check report).
• Where I’m at: Module 4 of 40-something. Course culminates in a 24-hour exam, which I swore I’d never do again after CRTP — but James Bond and Justin Bieber both say “Never say never.”

Tangent Town:

• The Shake Shack incident. It’s gross and not funny. But kind of funny.
• Saw (and sort of met) Calum Scott at the Fillmore in Minneapolis. Standing-room-only venue, but my wife found a clutch spot wedged between a security barrier and a support beam, perfect for our family. During an acoustic set, Calum and his band came right past us. My wife (unable to help herself) gave his shoulder a squeezy squeeze. I held out for the fist bump on his return trip to the stage — and we’re basically best friends now. I highly recommend his show: very positive guy, family-friendly, genuine.
• Seven super-fast non-spoilery movie reviews from plane rides and hotel nights:
  • Coherence — for smart people. I am not those people. Probably great if you can follow it.
  • Deadstream (Netflix) — YouTuber live-streams a night in a haunted house. Surprisingly entertaining, a couple of real jump-scares.
  • Get Away — a family vacations on a forbidden island. Goes somewhere unexpected in the third act.
  • Hell House LLC — found-footage haunted house. A couple of genuine flinches; story was just OK.
  • Hokum — Adam Scott as a writer at a hotel with a personal history. Creepy-crawly, goes to some dark places. Loved it.
  • Predator: Badlands — went in expecting mind-numbing action, but I loved it! I’d give it an 8 or 9 out of 10. It had action, LOLs, and even some tender Predator moments. Going to watch it again soon.
  • Obsession — young man buys a wish-granting trinket so a young lady will like him. It works. Then it really works. The movie slowly goes into full-on bonkers sauce mode! Satisfying but uncomfortable to watch at parts.

That’s it! 7MinSec.com for services, 7MinSec.club for the Substack, 7MinSec.wiki for pentest tips and scripts.