Ahmed Musaad

Learning

O’Reilly's Verifiable Skills

Turns out I knew more than I thought. Also, turns out I didn't know some stuff I was pretty sure I knew. O'Reilly's Verifiable Skills humbled me a little, in the best way possible.

Black Hat Featured

Black Hat Europe 2025

Black Hat Europe 2025 delivered a tidal wave of fresh research, shiny tools, and a surprising amount of swag (yes, I somehow left with a Bluetooth headset). Here is my recap of how it went, what I learned along the way.

Rants

Cleaning My MacBook Keyboard: How Hard Can It Be?

My “30-second wipe” turned into a keyboard slapstick scene: keys firing off like popcorn, and my MacBook acting possessed. Deep cleaning is easy only if you can temporarily lock the keyboard, macOS doesn't offer a way to do so. Here’s the tiny utility that saved my sanity in under a minute.

DNS

Exploring The Internet’s Domain Name Space

After my Swedish domain namespace adventure, I thought I’d do something sensible next. Instead, I decided to repeat the experiment at internet scale, which is the analytical equivalent of going from “a quiet stroll” to “let’s climb Everest in flip-flops”.

Blog

Less Tracking, Fewer Requests: Removing Fathom Analytics

I added analytics to this blog to understand my readers better. After years of never checking the data, I realized the most accurate insight was that I didn’t need it.

Exploration Featured

Exploring The Swedish Domain Name Space

A deep dive into Sweden’s .se domain space blending data analysis, security insights, and a dash of humour to uncover what’s really hiding in the internet’s phone book.

Mobile

My Favourite Mobile Apps (2025)

A deep dive into the apps that power my digital life, packed with personal favourites, hard-won picks, and fresh inspiration for your home screen.

Personal

What A Wonderful World

A personal story about how Louis Armstrong’s *What a Wonderful World* became my first understood English song—and my lifelong reminder of beauty, hope, and growth.

Certification

Google Cloud Professional Cloud Security Engineer

I recently passed the Google Cloud Security Engineer exam. In this post, I share a bit about my journey and experience taking the exam, along with many useful resources.

Sweden

The Journey Towards Swedish Citizenship

I've just become a Swedish citizen, a significant milestone that's been in the works for almost seven years. These are my thoughts and experiences about becoming one.

IoT

Bypassing Energy Keycard Switches

Energy keycard switches serve an important purpose, but many suffer from a flaw that renders them ineffective.

Monitoring

How A Downtime Alert Saved My Online Infrastructure

The story of how a simple downtime alert helped me avert a rather terrible situation and keep my online infrastructure intact.

Rabbit Holes

The Mystery of Missing Email Aliases

A thrilling mystery involving a popular email provider, an email security platform, an obscure bug, and a lot of missing email aliases.

Music

An Evening I Will Not Forget: Dermot Kennedy Live

After years of being a fan, I finally got to see Dermot Kennedy perform live and it was spectacular.

Tools

Scanning The Top 1000 Python Packages Using GuardDog

Using Guarddog to scan the top 1000 Python packages for malicious indicators.

Music

Kendrick Lamar Live

I finally saw Kendrick Lamar perform live on stage at the Avicii Arena, and it was spectacular.

Poems

A Poem About Sudan

A beautiful poem about Sudan.

Conferences Featured

Security Fest 2022

My recap for Security Fest 2022. Three days full of great talks, good company, lots of learning, astonishing views, and mouthwatering food.

Stockholm

Trevor Noah & Jeff Dunham Live In Stockholm

It was a good week, full of laugher, good company, and two of my favourite comedians.

Events

Go Hack Yourself Stockholm By Detectify

A short rundown of Detectify's latest Go Hack Yourself event in Stockholm. Good talks, cool people, and fun atmosphere.

Sweden

Permanent Residency In Sweden

I recently became a permanent resident of the Kingdom of Sweden, so let me tell you a bit about the journey to becoming one.

Okta

Avoid Unwanted Slack SSO Redirection Loop When Rolling Out Google & Third-Party IdP Integration

A tiny policy configuration can ruin your day and block your users from logging into Slack. Here is how to avoid this anxiety-inducing problem.

Okta Featured

Stream Okta Logs To Your Log Collector

Okta logs are only available for 90 days. Learn how to stream them to AWS EventBridge, CloudWatch, and Datadog.

Slack

Monitor Interesting Slack Discussions Using "My keywords"

Monitor interesting Slack discussions using the "My Keywords" feature.

Okta

Add Okta Authentication to any Website using Nginx and OAuth Proxy

Add an authetication layer to websites behind Nginx using Okta and OAuth Proxy.