Jack Feschuk

Category: Tech

  • Cybersecurity Icon Marc Rogers Faces Recovery Challenges and Insurance Shortfall

    Cybersecurity Icon Marc Rogers Faces Recovery Challenges and Insurance Shortfall

    Cybersecurity Icon Marc Rogers Faces Recovery Challenges and Insurance Shortfall

    Marc Rogers, a leading figure in cybersecurity and head of security at DEF CON, is facing significant medical challenges and financial strain following an accident that left him temporarily quadriplegic. Known for his impressive career—spanning roles at Vodafone, Okta, Cloudflare, and as a researcher who famously cracked Apple’s Touch ID—Rogers now faces months of recovery, including costly physical therapy.

    While his insurance covers only part of his treatment, friends have set up a fundraiser to bridge the gap, reflecting the grim reality of U.S. healthcare. “GoFundMe has become the de facto standard for covering insurance shortfalls,” Rogers remarked, expressing gratitude for the community’s support.

    The cybersecurity world has rallied behind him, raising over $83,000 toward a $100,000 goal. This outpouring of support highlights Rogers’ impact on the industry and the collective determination to help him return to his mission of “making bad guys cry.”

    Fundraiser link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-marc-rogers-road-to-recovery

    Source: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/07/def_con_security_chief_injured/

  • Sam Bankman-Fried gambled on a trial and his parents lost

    Sam Bankman-Fried gambled on a trial and his parents lost

    FTX Co-Founder Sam Bankman-Fried On Trial For Fraud The jury took a little over four hours to reach a verdict . When Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the defendant’s parents, came into the courtroom, they looked frightened. Bankman put his arm around Fried as they sat down on the […]

    Click here to view original web page at www.theverge.com

  • Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial is over — what now?

    Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial is over — what now?

    At a glance Jurors reached a decision to convict on all seven counts in under five hours on Thursday, a judgment as surprisingly swift and decisive as the trial itself. Bankman-Fried’s sentencing will take place March 28, 2024. He faces as much as 110 years in prison. The final […]

    Click here to view original web page at protos.com

  • Using my personal hosts file to block ads and more

    Using my personal hosts file to block ads and more

    Going forward with this website I will be maintaining a hosts file to block ads, trackers, malware, fraudulent sites, trackers and all other kinds of things. I’m using a lot of public sources that are merged together, cleaned up and then uploaded to https://www.jackfeschuk.com/hosts-file/

    I’m personally using this with all of my computers (macOS, Windows, Debian, Ubuntu, OpenBSD) my route rand iPhone. Its small, lightweight and shouldn’t go too far and break your websites.

    My hosts file page has instructions on where to place this file on your devices.

    I maintain it using the wonderful StevenBlack hosts file script found here.

  • The humble ping tool and how to use it with real examples

    The humble ping tool and how to use it with real examples

    ping‘s basic use is to determine the time it takes to send a packet to the destination and receive a response, the lower the time in milliseconds (ms) the better.

    The ping tool is the most commonly known network tool. I first used it decades ago as a child to test if websites were actually up or if my dial-up internet was just awful. Here are a few ways to use the tool in real world examples.

    For these examples I will be using the IP address 1.1.1.2 and hostname security.cloudflare-dns.com – Both of these are DNS servers run by Cloudflare. You can find more information and how to set it up here.

    Example #1 – Change the time between each ping

    ping interval
    ping -i 10 1.1.1.2

    ping is great to test an unstable internet connection, but by default, ping will send another after just 1 second. I like setting to 10 in this example. The “-i” stands for interval.

    EXAMPLE #2 – SEND A CERTAIN NUMBER OF PINGS

    ping count
    ping -c 100 1.1.1.2

    You can set the number of pings to be sent and the utility will quit after and print the results. Very useful for obtaining a good average latency out of 10 or 100 packets as well as establishing a good average percentage of packet loss. The “-c” stands for count.

    EXAMPLE #3 – OBTAIN THE IP ADDRESS OF A HOSTNAME/DOMAIN NAME

    ping domain
    ping security.cloudflare-dns.com

    This has to be the most popular use-case for ping that I remember from my childhood. We would use this simple tool to find an IP address for a hostname/domain name and use that to gather more information about the service.

    EXAMPLE #4 – COMBINE THE OPTIONS

    ping combined
    ping -i 10 -c 10 security.cloudflare-dns.com

    I use this to easily test the latency of a DNS, proxy, VPN or any other server. I will ping it ten times with a 10 second interval and then I just read the average time and I compare it to another. For very poorly performing servers I will take a sample of 100 pings with 60 seconds in between each and I leave it running to see if the performance issues are related to the time of day or some specific operations on the machine.