Weaponizing Your Pets: The War Kitteh and the Denial of Service Dog
Gene Bransfield Principle Security Engineer at Tenacity Solutions, Inc.
WarKitteh: In my job I have to deliver frequent Information Security briefings to both technical and non-technical professionals. I noticed that as the material got more technical, I began to lose the non-technical crowd. Therefore, I started including humorous pictures of cats and made the briefings include stories about those cats. This worked, and I soon became notorious for my presentation style. After delivering one of those presentations, an audience member offered to lend me their cat tracking collar. The collar contained a GPS device and a cellular component and would track your cats movements throughout the neighborhood. Me being the guy I am, I thought “All you need now is a WiFi sniffing device and you'd have a War Kitteh.” I laughed, and started working on it.
DoS Dog: With apologies to LadyMerlin (who has since blessed the project) I attended Outerz0ne one year and LadyMerlin brought her dog. They had labeled the puppy the “Denial of Service Dog” as the pooch demanded so much attention that it was impossible to complete any task other than petting the dog. I thought that if you loaded a doggie backpack with different equipment (e.g. a Pineapple) you could create a Denial of Service Dog of a different kind.
Gene Bransfield is a Principle System Security Engineer with Tenacity Solutions Inc. In his 20 years of Information Systems and Cyber Security experience he has performed penetration testing and security compliance assessments; he has authored security policy; and has provided information security consulting to government and civilian clientèle. He has a Masters Degree in Information Security and Assurance from George Mason University and maintains several industry certifications. He is a husband, a father, and a dog owner. Despite subject material, he does not own a cat.
