Lesley Carhart :unverified:

https://infosec.exchange/@hacks4pancakes

I am eminently qualified to speak from experience about a variety of dumpster fires.

ICS cybersecurity person, PancakesCon Infosec Conference (npub1xe6…p3u6) organizer, martial artist, marksman, humanist, level 14 Neutral Good rogue, USAF retired. Speaker available for gigs.

Gin connoisseur. Rodent parent. Some dipshit from Chicago. Now an immigrant in Melbourne.

I post *very serious* things about infosec. Thoughts are entirely my own.

'they/them' 🏳️‍🌈 :nonbinary_flag: :asexual_flag:

Verified by: https://fedified.com
Blog: https://tisiphone.net
Instagram / Threads: https://www.instagram.com/hacks4pancakes/
Mentoring: https://calendly.com/lesleycarhart
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hacks4pancakes.com
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/-hacks4pancakes-/

Public Key

npub1nrxy5t33lfsyssytjtht4l7tm2matfmvhyyrzryyuundqem2ya2s0tm4fy

NIP-05 Address

hacks4pancakes_at_infosec.exchange@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsf3nz29ccl5czggz9e9m46ll9a4d745aktjzp3pjzwwfksva4zw4gpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds4jag4h

Publishing to

saltivka.org

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1nrxy5t33lfsyssytjtht4l7tm2matfmvhyyrzryyuundqem2ya2s0tm4fy

Show more details

Published at

2026-05-21T17:30:12Z

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0 Metadata

Event JSON

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Last Notes

2026-05-27 02:46:29 UTC

Hooboy. I won a R36S at a hacker conference a few days ago. I love classic games and was eyeing it for a while, but hadn't invested in one because I have emulators all over. In the intervening week, obviously I've bought a case, a wifi dongle for it, the adapter for the wifi dongle, a SD card, a couple shareware utilities to configure it and troubleshoot it, and spent about 8 hours fighting with identifying the screen to install dArkOS and get the wifi dongle working, reconfiguring fstab to get it to see my second micro SD properly, and reloading games.
Well, I now have it working, minus sound (I think that I have a newer and yet unsupported model). But who needs sound when you have Contra? I actually haven't really played any games. I just keep adding stuff to it.
This little guy is going to be a lot of fun, but I think more of a fun hacking and troubleshooting it perhaps, than actually playing the games.
And I've definitely spent more than it cost the prize-givers. XD
Would recommend to train any young gamer-prospective hackers to use linux and fight with hardware! A+++++

2025-10-24 11:53:57 UTC

To better describe what immigration is really like even when you’re incredibly privileged, I’ll be teaching my class next week from a floor at a friend’s house in another country while also being translated into Japanese to not interfere with my residency application.

2025-10-13 13:00:09 UTC

Cybersecurity Reddit is devolving between mid career IT with certs saying only degrees are getting hired and grads saying only certs and experience are getting hired - and I’m sorry but this is late stage capitalist hell, comrades. Only people with degrees plus experience and certs are getting hired

2025-09-17 00:24:34 UTC

I do not know another way to express to people that trying to appease fascists by “being a good minority” or totally deferring to them publicly has saved absolutely no marginalized group or profession in human history. They are coming after us anyway. Even if you scold peers for not being nice.

2025-09-12 15:49:43 UTC

This week has left me with two uncomfortable truths:
- a nonzero number of online adults didn’t know of a conservative figurehead who terrorized queer people and women in America
- there are people in my generation who are somehow not exposed to brain rot on the daily
I want to experience that

2025-09-09 08:40:59 UTC

Oh not me realizing I’m now in a -50hz country- and trying to squint and see the lights flickering 😅

2025-09-08 03:29:02 UTC

Man, I got in this huge, flashy debate with people on the left and the right on Bluesky last night...
Look, here's the deal.
I wish they had voted.
Nothing in life is simple. We want there to be easy, straightforward, singular reasons for the awful mess the planet and America are in. Unfortunately, the reasons are complex, based in psychology, sociology, technology, education, money, and the list goes on and on. And there's a hell of a lot of blame to go around. The entire ludicrous, racist MAGA movement, the greedy GOP and their gerrymandering and voter suppression, narcissist billionaires, weak and out of touch Democratic leadership, a culture of corruption and money-making in our senior levels of politics.
Then there's the voters. The ones who would sell their mom or kid before giving up being racist or homophobic. The ones who meant well but were so stuck on one issue that they they were willing to burn society down in multiple countries instead of compromising for a lesser evil. The massive, massive percentage who just couldn't be bothered to care enough to vote at all.
Yeah, it's the last two groups that hurt me the most as I watch America crumbling. I can understand -evil-. I can understand bigots who are so brainwashed in a bigoted, angry cult that it will take formal religious deprogramming to reach them. I grew up surrounded by them. I understand monsters. Okay, that's a problem to add to the pile.
But the people who still, even today haughtily defend not voting at all, or voting for a third party -for a general election president-, in what was visibly quite possibly the last free and fair election in American history... but have emotions, independent thought, care about issues. Those ones broke my heart more than anybody else.
Don't you dare accuse me of not caring about what's happening to Palestine or Ukraine. Don't you dare accuse me of not caring about trans rights. I'm marching and donating and phone banking shoulder to shoulder with everyone else. I've certainly been outspoken about Democratic party leadership's (especially the old guard's) weakness on geopolitical and social issues.
But this was it. 2024 was kind of the last chance. Gerrymandering and voter suppression is at unprecedented levels with few remaining checks and balances. A lot of government infrastructure and knowledge has been dismantled chaotically or even pushed out of the US. The supreme court is partisan now for a whole generation. Corporations and billionaires have gained money and influence.
The idealists who think we'll just spring back into a socialist paradise if we buck the man enough... IDK, guys. I spent a long military career across two miserable wars and a lot of natural disasters seeing just how quickly and horribly a healthy modern society can crumble. And the -cost-. The horrific human cost. The cost to infrastructure, health, education, science, art...
Revolutions are ugly and messy - and most in history haven't involved nuclear superpowers which over-equipped militaries and militarized police. They're not a cute teen dystopian novel. They're not Le Mis with nice costumes and a cocktail. We rely on incredibly complex critical infrastructure. Transportation. Just in time logistics. Do your plans include how to live without sewage in a city for a month? Where you'll get medication? The boring stuff.
I really hope I'm wrong and America has a fair election in 2028 and it's like Newsom Buttigieg or whatever you guys want, and we're able to force the democratic party to take on AOC and Sanders' excellent talking points and replace the old guard. That would be super duper. I just can't see this ending with the utopia you want. Ukraine and Gaza are still starving and burning. Our neighbors are being taken to camps. Trans rights are being stripped apace. And now we have no influence at all to help them via a government. And rich politicians are still safe as houses.
I wish they had voted.

2025-09-05 06:50:50 UTC

Um, so have any leftist gun people but me thought about the erm, additional unpleasant logistics of trying to legally ban only trans gun ownership? Because half of states require no or even discourage bg checks for buying a gun through private sales. So they would either be requiring trans status to be on ID or something (oh good, labeled minorities...) or we have bathroom bill 2.0 to buy a gun, if you look slightly too femme or masc.
And even if they only do it via the federal NICS checks at shop dealers, it means that there's a comprehensive federal database of trans people.
It is real real bad on a wholllle lot of levels. Even if you don't want to ever touch a gun, this is like either mass data collection on vulnerable people or visible marking on IDs, etc.

2025-09-01 11:24:10 UTC

I cannot believe I have to say this but please do not schedule my limited free mentoring time to have a -date- with me.

2025-08-30 10:26:21 UTC

Jesusfuck I am just finding out about the Pentagon Pizza index and that totally tracks

2025-08-24 05:49:01 UTC

- reply

To use AIML, you had to know a lot about computers. You had to really understand how it worked to build your own chat bot. It could learn over time by building a database of string based responses. You could hard code responses to full and partial strings like words and phrases. It was hard work.

2025-08-24 05:48:59 UTC

This feels like a very @npub1tx8…x0yc story but I’m going to tell it.
Chat bots (not just LLM driven) are surprisingly old. In the mid 90s, a mark up language for string-driven bots called AIML was released. A small community of early hackers and devs got really into it. I was part as a teen.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/082/168/751/228/844/original/b3174316198261c1.jpeg

2025-08-15 08:44:40 UTC

Like… I’m not one to yuck someone’s yum - and at 42 I’ve certainly had work done, but it’s not as much about insulting looks as a psychological study into the bizarre influences and self hate impacting the high profile MAGA women. It shows how little autonomy they really hold.
None of those women (while extremely evil) would have been considered conventionally unattractive before surgery, fillers, Botox, hair bleaching and dying, micro blading, etc. But they felt the need to fall into a very exacting standard that doesn’t even align with overall American fashion trends
There’s obviously a fucking lot to unpack there and I’m not a psychologist or sociologist.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/115/031/889/018/113/976/original/366613b334d6e296.jpeg

2025-08-13 01:08:50 UTC

Guys,
Please.
Be better than the commenters.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jessicaweiland_i-want-to-make-one-thing-clear-women-get-activity-7360738362321694720-1nDG

2025-08-03 06:52:37 UTC

Do you own an Aldi multimeter because I now own an Aldi multimeter
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/963/510/553/490/012/original/1af144a72c17e6af.jpeg

2025-07-27 22:09:09 UTC

Hoooly shit. The horrible takes on the Tea app hack.
Yes, vibe coding and lack of a security team got them into this mess - and AI is hell,
Simultaneously, the gleeful dudes exposing their the private details of their entire user base of mostly women trying to stay safe and alive to the internet (and almost totally dude commenters giggling about it) show exactly why the app was very much needed. This is also true.

2025-07-20 21:17:21 UTC

The furthest you can practically travel on Earth in a straight line is about 20,000km. I just did 18,000 in one go with a carryon. I want a damn pancake.

2025-07-20 07:20:07 UTC

AI isn’t replacing shit
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/884/346/223/553/774/original/52900f9d5b840780.jpeg

2025-07-20 00:00:21 UTC

I have watched the entire Olympus has Fallen trilogy and G20 this week and somehow in these movies about heroic Americans the hacking and explosions aren’t the most fake thing anymore. 😩🤷🏻‍♀️

2025-07-18 01:41:08 UTC

The absolute funniest shit is the cybersecurity consultants who are trying to advertise they would have stopped a startup CEO from going to a sold out show with a side piece
My sibling in Cthulhu, you wouldn’t stop them hiring an escort on their work laptop with admin rights and AV removed

2025-07-13 00:43:54 UTC

Just a veteran, not wanting to live in a country that hand waves away the bloody Epstein investigation.

2025-06-19 13:32:19 UTC

Nothing quite like eight ornery Aussies in the audience chorusing “that’s a comment what’s the question mate” under their breaths at a talk. It’s giving me life 🤩😅🤣✨

2025-06-14 05:29:29 UTC

The raids on my former home started today. Nobody is doing anything, as predicted.
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/680/068/091/313/467/original/2b4822ed08d801a4.jpeg

2025-04-28 13:19:42 UTC

Watching Spain and Portugal very closely, but please don’t jump to conclusions. Lots of bizarre root causes in big power grids.

2025-04-16 17:59:43 UTC

Oh my god. Kevin!!! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevin-beaumont-security_the-cve-memes-are-flowing-activity-7318217220935831553-jIw0

2025-03-12 07:37:11 UTC

- reply

“But Lesley you do that”
“Yeah but I have… zero ability to respond to it”

2025-03-12 07:34:25 UTC

People in Australia are being exactly as nice to me as I am to strangers who need my help - and I’m realizing that has never happened to me before at scale, and it is really messing me up. 😩🥹 I do not know how to react.

2025-03-02 06:56:42 UTC

- reply

anyone who still has some notion Elon wants to do any good for America should consider 18F was the epitome of using startup methodology and tech for efficiency and cost savings. And he blew it away.

2025-02-16 04:08:18 UTC

Women are being -erased- in America #resist https://www.reddit.com/r/optimistsunitenonazis/s/FvYzm4erhn
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/011/596/273/460/294/original/f6a3b8d0df31ac45.jpeg

2025-02-10 14:42:03 UTC

Oh my god, they just unintentionally wrecked a ton of red team playbooks at the NSA
https://journa.host/@w7voa/113979636920031167
https://media.infosec.exchange/infosec.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/980/114/189/720/755/original/ec51bae73f4608ac.jpeg

2025-02-08 15:30:48 UTC

- reply

If you think I’m being extreme, read this saga of a trans person currently even trying to get a passport. They were lucky to have an old ID still, and to meet an understanding bureaucrat, https://www.reddit.com/r/Passports/s/JCrTkHeBco
It’s month one.

2025-02-07 01:19:15 UTC

Just a reminder that our trans industry colleagues are literally running out the clock. Life and death. If you are wondering if you should offer them a gig even at a low rate outside America, for the love of Pete, do it now. There very well might not be a later for them, even to get a passport to leave. If this is imposter syndrome about their followers, credentials, or reputation, just offer the damn job. SOC analyst. Trainer. Anything.

2025-01-18 19:29:10 UTC

- reply

Oh ok I’m coming back for this: deciding we are on “teams” that are infallible is basest human nature and exactly how we are falling into global nationalism and a ironclad two party system in the US. Call shit out when your friends and coworkers do it. Call your orgs out!

2025-01-18 19:15:15 UTC

- reply

*Walks off shaking my head at the Proton apologists*

2025-01-18 19:08:19 UTC

- reply

Frankly it’s gross, and I’m disappointed in a few of you. I donate to ACLU and EFF and I will absolutely call out their rare policies and statements which harm marginalized people.

2025-01-18 19:03:25 UTC

(Takes a deep breath)
We obviously need to have a talk about the fact that most hackers are pretty socially liberal and personal liberty driven. That means we typically fall in line on ideals with libertarian and civil liberties organizations and pundits.
It seems that some people are just discovering that occasionally techbro and traditional libertarians push things at those orgs to an extreme that not only do we not support and have to call out, but even the good people working there object to.
You do not need to be a universal apologist for those organizations because they mostly do good stuff. It’s unbecoming. Endorsing very bad stuff and fascist enabling is in fact, super bad. It needs to be resoundingly condemned, immediately.

2025-01-17 23:58:56 UTC

Haven’t heard much from EFF or Proton on their happy applause for anti trans policies.

2025-01-15 16:09:04 UTC

When Florida can report and arrest trans people for just going to the bathroom, and they can now also forcibly detransition people in prison by refusing their meds and shaving their heads, and the industry is still ✨⭐️conference at Epcot✨⭐️!

2025-01-10 20:30:24 UTC

- reply

no real endgame, just a greedy maw that can never be satisfied

2024-10-30 14:48:12 UTC

I am not sure that people outside the US who have not had to deal with a similar party leader understand when we say, 'cult', we mean an actual, completely brainwashed cult. Not just racists. Not just people who like strong men or fascism, as exists globally today. An actual cult, where the members are willing to abandon their families and long-time friends, give away their belongings, and even resort to violence. Nothing, no matter how vile or rational, will get through to them except careful deprogramming. We have to contend with that. It can happen to you. Please be careful out there. #VoteBlue2024 #harriswalz2024 #voteblue2024protectdemocracy

2024-10-29 02:35:28 UTC

- reply

People on Mastodon, book smart and well meaning: “well actually, the actual sea level rising was off from that figure by 1mm this year, you should delete your urgent climate change post. In this thesis I will,