Hey — I’m a cyber security researcher and home lab enthusiast based in the US. This is where I document what I’m actually working on.

Background

I work in cyber security research and education, with a focus on threat analysis and staying sharp on the evolving threat landscape. My days are split between training the next generation of security professionals and diving deep into the vulnerabilities that matter.

What This Blog Is

ricanwarfare | Cyber & Lab is where I document what I’m actually working on — not recycled press releases or hype, but real analysis of vulnerabilities, lab builds, and the tools I use daily.

What you’ll find here

  • CVE Deep Dives — Reverse engineering and impact analysis of actively exploited vulnerabilities, focused on what matters for homelab and enterprise stacks
  • Lab Guides — Proxmox hardening, network architecture, container security — built the hard way so you don’t have to
  • Threat Lab Roundups — Weekly summaries of what’s actually being exploited, not just what got a CVE assigned
  • AI & Automation — Practical use of LLMs for security work, not marketing fluff

What you won’t find

  • Vendor marketing disguised as analysis
  • Regurgitated CVE descriptions without context
  • “10 things you need to know” listicles

The Lab

My home lab is the test bed for everything I write about. It runs on Proxmox with a mix of Linux and Windows VMs, Docker services, and more network segmentation than my wife thinks is necessary.

Current stack highlights:

  • Hypervisor: Proxmox VE (hardened, VLAN-segmented)
  • Storage: Synology DS920+
  • Networking: VLANs for management, DMZ, and IoT isolation; AdGuard for DNS filtering
  • Services: Nginx Proxy Manager, Uptime Kuma, Nextcloud, media stack (arr stack + qBittorrent)
  • Monitoring: Netdata, Uptime Kuma, Git-tracked configs

Philosophy

Verify everything. Don’t trust the config file — check the running state. Don’t trust the vendor advisory — check the patch. Don’t trust the blog post — reproduce it yourself.

That’s the approach I bring to every post on this site.

Contact

Opinions expressed here are my own, not those of any employer or organization.