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sourceWelcome to volume twenty-four of Scrolls, a newsletter for sharing cool stuff from the IndieWeb, Fediverse & Cybersecurity realms. This week we discuss the point of blogging, what social media is (and isn’t), and drop a lot of awesome infosec tools/resources.
Scrolls isn’t dead yet. Let’s go!
IndieWeb
What’s the point of blogging? Who’s a blog for? I’ve always said my blog is a place for myself, but it can of course be so much more. These days, people really don’t think much about “blogging” in the classic sense. Instead, we’ve grown accustomed to shoving our thoughts into small, character-constrained boxes owned by [INSERT BIG TECH COMPANY NAME HERE]. We’ve gone from surfing to scrolling, and we lost the web along the way. This is where the IndieWeb comes into play—as a means to reclaim digital independence, and the beauty that once was.
So what should you do with your site? (Y’know, once you’ve got one up.) You can really do anything, but I like the idea of making your site a digital home of sorts. Your site, as it exists on the web, doesn’t need to conform, or have any specific things, or be “a part” of anything. It can just kinda be there, at an address you own. You can put whatever you like there. That said, as the owner of a site, at a domain you own, you are in many ways already part of something larger known as the “IndieWeb”. So where can you go with that? Honestly, I think just writing, and publishing said writing on your site is a great place to start. If you’re looking for inspiration, community, or prompts, check out the various writing months (e.g. TILvember) or the IndieWeb Carnival. Not sure you know what you want to write? Maybe try replanting some older, or forgotten articles on your site. Or, you can help connect the web by sharing sites you love on your own site, through something like a blogroll.
One thing you should absolutely do for your site, especially if you have, or plan to have, any type of “posts” there, is have an RSS feed—because RSS is awesome. RSS is important, it is the tried and true, reliable way to share your content with others, and consume a variety of content from across the web. Simple. Easy. Free. Do it.
Lastly, don’t forget. AI sucks.
Small Web Finds and Features
Here’s a handful of cool sites I’ve enjoyed recently…
- mcyoung has an extremely eye-pleasing indie site 🤩.
- HISVIRUSNESS has an awesome hackery/indie feel to it.
- This site—I’m honestly not sure what is going on with it, but it looks amazing.
Fediverse
What we’ve seen in the social media landscape over the past 4 years or so should be enough to convince you that you shouldn’t rely on big tech, or any social media platform to function as your “identity” on the web. But that doesn’t mean social media isn’t as important as ever, as a place for community, news, organization and more. Carefully consider where you decide to set down roots in terms of social media and building a community. No one platform is going to give you everything, but many will have certain dealbreakers that you must consider. Obviously I make the case often about the Fediverse and why it is where you should invest, but other options do technically exist. But really, how can those other options even compare when Fedi has stuff like this?!
Cybersecurity
New year, same cyber. Let’s see what we’ve got…
A few interesting writeups to check out—CSP for Pentesters, Breaking Trusted Execution Enironments via DDR5 Memory Bus Interposition and The Normalization of Deviance in AI.
The infosec community continues to pump out all manner of free tools and resources. I’ve catalogued a few I’ve recently discovered below…
- Prompt Feed: Browse and explore security prompts with detailed analysis and references.
- Agentic AI Red Teaming Playboook: Introduction to Agentic AI Red Teaming - The how, what, and why.
- The Evidence Locker: A DFIR image compendium.
- OWASP Top 10 2025: The latest installment from OWASP.
- ucti.app: A microblog cyber threat intelligence search engine.
- HydraPWK: HydraPWK The Open-source security auditing toolkit based on Debian project designed and focused for industry realm, research, forensic, end point attack.
- lolwifi.network: Is Untrusted (Public) WiFi Safe?
- Just use CURL: Just do it.
Looking to build your own infosec news feed? To get ya started, I recommend following Tim on Mastodon (specifically checking out his weekly link roundups like this one). You can also sub to the new, and cool, Hacklore Project.
Finally, I’ll leave you with some things to ponder… Why are there so few women in infosec & why folks are leaving the security industry?
IndieSec BlogsThanks for reading Scrolls! Off to brew some zen…
