Friday was my last day at HelpSystems. I spent the day on the #Aggressor channel on Slack, put some final touches on a 12 month roadmap document, and worked with my colleagues to remove myself from a few systems I had originally designed. I had planned to get a blog post out yesterday, but the day ran right up to my dinner plans!
Cobalt Strike is in great shape. The product is no longer the efforts of one person. There’s a full research and development team behind it. Greg Darwin is the leader. You’ll see his announcements here and on the Cobalt Strike Technical Notes mailing list. Twitter announcements for Cobalt Strike will come from @CoreAdvisories as well.
You’ve seen the work of our R&D team. 4.3 was their release. I provided guidance, but they 100% carried it.
The team is filled with very senior software folks. All come from security backgrounds (one of our engineers was tech lead of HelpSystems’ server antivirus product). The forward mantra is to keep the product stable and to continue to give more flexibility into the product’s attack chain.
The above team was three folks one week ago. A fourth engineer joined this week. And, we’re recruiting our hacker-in-residence as well. The hacker-in-residence will pick up some aspects of my role: input on the overall product direction, providing subject matter expertise on offense topics, and interacting with and helping all of us learn from you.
You have a bigger ally now. HelpSystems’ business strategy in this space is simple. As red teaming succeeds as a practice, we’ll succeed as a business. Cobalt Strike is in good hands.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to work with you for the past decade. It was the greatest privilege of my career. For me, the biggest thrill in this work wasn’t related to the technology. It was watching your careers, seeing your successes, and feeling a small supporting role in it. Thanks for having me as part of it.