Ahmed Musaad

I am a senior security engineer, a programmer, and a hobbyist system administrator. I enjoy learning new things, solving challenging problems and writing about things I find interesting.

105 posts

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Self Hosting Firefox Send

Ahmed Musaad

Firefox Send is a great file sharing service with E2EE and automatic deletion. In this post, I walk you through the steps to self host your own instance.

3 min read Apr 25, 2020

Lists public

This year, I am trying to get back to my old reading habits and repair a fractured relationship with books. If you are looking for something to read, here is my reading list. I hope you find a book that intrigues you.

1 min read Apr 25, 2020

HOWTOs public

Add Google Authentication to any Website using Nginx and Oauth Proxy

Ahmed Musaad

It can be frustrating to find out your favourite self-hosted application doesn’t support authentication of any type. Not to worry, in this post I will walk you through the steps to add simple authentication to any website using a simple and easy to configure Oauth proxy.

3 min read Apr 22, 2020

HOWTOs public

Downloading A Website from The Internet Archive

Ahmed Musaad

I was working on recovering some lost websites through their cached copies on the Wayback Machine. I needed a much faster (and more offline) way to access these cached copies of websites. Hartator's Wayback Machine Downloader to the rescue.

1 min read Apr 20, 2020

HOWTOs public

Connect to RDS using Python & SSL

Ahmed Musaad

Are you trying to connect to an RDS instance from a Python script while maintaining SSL encryption? If so, then you are in luck, the following script provides a simple example of how to create and use such a connection.

1 min read Apr 16, 2020

HOWTOs public

Find the Team and Bundle IDs of a macOS Package

Ahmed Musaad

Want to create a PPPC profile that whitelists a macOS application and approves its extensions without the need of user approval? You will need the bundle and team IDs of the app.

1 min read Apr 1, 2020

HOWTOs public

Find the Public Key of a ProtonMail User

Ahmed Musaad

I realised I needed an easier way to provide my PGP key to readers without putting the key itself on the page (for several reasons). I thought this information could be useful to others, so here we go.

1 min read Mar 29, 2020

Tools public

Useful Tools (1)

Ahmed Musaad

Every day I come across a multitude of tools that do this or that, and while a lot of them are overrated, there are many useful tools that help me enhance my productivity. In this series of posts, I share these tools with you.

2 min read Dec 29, 2019

Knowledge public

On Scapegoating CISOs

Ahmed Musaad

After a major breach, it's often the CISO that falls on their sword and finds themselves looking for work. Do you think this a good display of accountability, or a damaging form of scapegoating?

2 min read Nov 20, 2019

Tools public

iVerify Security App for iPhone

Ahmed Musaad

Trails of Bits recently released a new security app for iPhone (iVerify). An easy to use the app with great user experience and informative guides that helps you improve the security of your iPhone in a few minutes.

1 min read Nov 17, 2019

Knowledge public

Paul Graham on Schedules

Ahmed Musaad

A meeting in the morning can ruin any chance of doing something productive before lunch, and the same thing goes for meetings after lunch, they reduce the possibility of completing bigger tasks in the afternoon.

2 min read Nov 7, 2019

Conferences public

Hack.lu 2019 - Day (3)

Ahmed Musaad

It's the last day of Hack.lu. I am a bit exhausted, arrived a bit late and missed the first session of the day. Nonetheless, it was a great day, filled with learning and networking.

3 min read Oct 26, 2019