Ever wonder how secrets actually sprawl? What does it look like from the credential's point of view?
I built a story game to explore this concept
Rated E for Everyone

https://dwayne-mcdaniel.com/games/thelittlekey.html

If you follow me, you know I travel a lot, so it might seem odd to say I am legitimately excited to travel again this week.
But this week I get to go back to Cincinnati for Queen City Con, one of the best security conferences I have ever been part of.
If you like #DEFCON, then you would LOVE this event!
If you have time to get there, this is worth the trip this weekend: https://queencitycon.org/agenda

#QCC2026

Huge thanks to Darin Pope and Viktor Farcic for having me on the #DevOpsParadox podcast!

Thanks again for having me! It was a blast.

Listen to episode 376: Secrets Management for AI Agents:

https://www.devopsparadox.com/episodes/secrets-management-for-ai-agents-376/

Just over a week to go before I head to Canada for #BSidesOttawa2026,

This is going to be an amazing time, and I can't wait to see everyone.
Ping me if you are going as well!
#BSidesOttawa

There has been a LOT going on and I have been posting a lot, might have buried this link in that flood of content
I have been building point-and-click games recently, releasing them as I go.
This is an old-fashioned fetch quest about getting permissions and doing favors to defeat level bosses, with a walkthrough built in!

https://dwayne-mcdaniel.com/games/dontbreakprod.html

i got some really good feedback on Lossy Inc, my Sierra-style point and click adventure.
The backlog got so big i thought it merited a new game.
so, may I present Dont Break Prod:

https://dwayne-mcdaniel.com/games/dontbreakprod.html

All feedback welcome

I had the BEST time at Texas Linux Fest.
The spirit of the open-source community is very much alive and well, and it was pure joy to celebrate with everyone!
We are all in this together!

Here are my (AI-cleaned-up) notes from the event:
https://dwayne-mcdaniel.com/blog/TexasLinuxFest2026.html

Texas Linux Fest 2026's final presentation of the event

Centrally managed multi-factor authentication for all your users' notebooks

from Cornelius Kölbel, Project lead of the MFA system privacyIDEA.

#TXLF 2026

Texas Linux Fest

Agentic Infrastructure Lifecycle Management
from Cody Lee Cochran, Principal Engineer and Enterprise Architect at Global InfoTek, Inc.

#TXLF 2026

Texas Linux Fest
The Right to rm -rf: Building a Global, Self-Hosted Backup and Restore Platform

from Justin Campbell

#TXLF 2026

Texas Linux Fest 2026

Using eBPF for Kubernetes Observability Without the Overhead
from Peter Zaitsev, founder of Percona and co-founder of Coroot

#TXLF 2026

Texas Linux Fest 2026

Attack of the AI Bots!!
from Eduardo Robles, Cybersecurity Analyst at the County of Hidalgo

#TXLF 2026

Texas Linux Fest Keynote:
Surviving the Rugpull Economy
from Don Marti, the founder of Aloodo LLC and former editor of Linux Journal

#TXLF 2026

Day one of Texas Linux Fest 2026 wraps up with Lightning Talks!
So many people sharing so much knowledge

#TXLF 2026

#TXLF 2026 afternoon workshop:
Build a Safer sudo with Cedar
Michael Schwartz and Brant Schwartz

Breaking news:
The attackers are running ARTEX, an open-source framework built for red teams to find and exploit secrets at scale.

GitGuardian is actually purpose-built to help teams deal with this kind of blast radius and scale.

DM me, and I can get you directly in touch with our team if you are being hit.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/11/05/threat-actors-use-agentic-ai-tooling-to-find-and-abuse-exposed-secrets/

The Texas Linux Fest has kicked off here in Austin!
I am super excited to be a part of this, the mood is electric already.
First up: Power Editing with Vi: Basics workshop
Presented by Aleksey Tsalolikhin
#TXLF

Two things I love: cybersecurity and old Sierra adventure games.

So naturally, I combined them.

Play it online
Nothing to install
No backend even
Save your progress with good ol fashion save codes (LR-EXMP-CODE)

Share those codes to show off your high scores!

And please help me spread this online...

https://dwayne-mcdaniel.com/games/lossy.html

I LOVE OTTAWA!!!
I have not been back in a few years and I am thrilled to get to go and be part of their BSides this year. In the area? Come join the conference.
https://www.bsidesottawa.ca/

I am traveling Thursday for #TexasLinuxFest 2026.

If you are around and free in the evenings, hit me up