Daniel Karistai

hacker, recovering sysadmin turned security manager. Constantly wondering where my next coffee is going to come from. Bsky:

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

- Albert Camus

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

@benhackshealth @chesscom I've always taken it as a sign of respect for my time. If you know it's over, don't waste my time moving your pawn 20 times and just move on to the next opponent that is more at your level.

[hashcat @hashcat]

hashcat v8.0.0 released!

The largest update in the history of hashcat, with PCFG attacks, hash recipes that crack hashes without a hash-mode, and bcrypt on FPGA boards.

Release notes: https://t.co/0ffrO586PJ
Download: https://t.co/Grn4jZmAWr

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

@HackingDave Researchers baffled they’re coming to conclusions the subjects have been saying for years to be true 😂

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

Proton hosts Flock map revealing over 300,000 cameras, defying cease-and-desist threats against creator — privacy-focused company hosts site on Swiss servers, says users have the right to know who’s recording them.

https://t.co/yXA8qTEBnz

[Jeff Geerling @geerlingguy]

This might be the most watched GitHub Actions build in the history of the platform: https://t.co/JXEdjPGHxY

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

Patch your Plex servers, friends.

https://t.co/Oejog7JXce

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

Every time I work late, my boxer bullies me to start paying attention to him again until I finish what I'm working on. Then he's indifferent again.

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

@HackingLZ Walking into a Buc-ee’s while on a road trip or something is the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing a fever dream.

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

@HackingLZ Not one moment did I see where this headline was going.

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

@rekdt Not the hero we asked for.

[0xor0ne @0xor0ne]

How to use LLMs for vulnerability research by @ZephrFish (Andy Gill)

MCP: https://t.co/MT4LbPOVGU
Harness: https://t.co/Boa1uD5BQu

#infosec #llm

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

@rekdt “Soft skills” 🙄

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

Witcher 3’s remastered version was pushed to my console. So, naturally, I need to learn how to play the game all over again 🤷‍♂️

[Mike Felch (Stay Ready) @ustayready]

Seeing people play around with jailbreaks on a US Gov website is peak 2026. Yall play around if you want to but I'd go read what happened to a bunch of kids in circa 99-00 hacking groups when Gov/Mil was played with. It doesnt end well when you land on their radar.

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

@benhackshealth This needs to be turned into a Lego scene

[gabsmashh @gabsmashh]

since tomorrow is October 1, this is my annual reminder to please stop using CSAM as the acronym for cybersecurity awareness month

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

Just a note about impact. 2019 is when I decided to get my shit together. I was 35 with a myriad of physical and mental health issues that would ensure I wouldn’t see 50. So I decided by 40 the scale will drop to a certain number, I’d be out of hypertension, and would harness my executive disfunction in a constructive way.

2020 hit. On top of what we collectively went through, I had a friend drink himself to death and then someone close to me died of a drug overdose. I couldn’t handle such grief in isolation.

So I started walking. Aimed for 5 miles a day and that change in my daily routine set off a cascade of other changes. My mobility improved, that 5 miles took less time to complete, I had to work harder to get my heart rate up.

Two things became true at once. I knew I started to head down an important direction and I had no idea where I was going. Sometime later Ben and Dave started the podcast and I listened all about the blueprint for @wehackhealth - sleep, nutrition, mental health, exercise. The data driven approach is why I set up my first call with Ben and a week or so later I knew this is a coaching dynamic I’d do well in.

2022 was when this changed from a fitness coaching setup to a real community I could belong in. We went from discord groups to in person meetups that now happen a few times each year. We made friendships that last, achieved goals, and bettered ourselves along the way.

Ben’s vacillation between challenging everything with a “why” and “fuck ‘em, do it anyway” while teaching me how to lift heavy things and strategies for managing nutrition, helped me build the self confidence I needed to do some really hard things. He’s been a coach and a friend through it all.

By 40, I got my shit together and have since been moving the goal posts to see what else I’m capable of.

If you’re looking for a place to start, there is no downside to booking a call.

[Ben Canning @benhackshealth]

6 years ago, almost to the day, I got a Facebook message from @HackingDave.

After a few messages back and forth, we decided a call would be better.

Looking back, I’m not sure either of us knew the impact that call would have - not only on our lives, but potentially thousands of others.

When I initially spoke to Dave, it started like any other discovery call.

I wanted to understand what he was trying to achieve, where he was stuck, what he had tried in the past, what his life looked like and how we could build something that would actually work for him.

In his own words, he had “tried it all.”

He’d had some successes here and there, but nothing that was sustainable long term.

His first message said:

“Something I lack is a formalized coach and nutrition help. Really looking for a long term life change and to stay committed and cut down on fat and bulk up.”

He wasn’t looking for another six-week transformation.
He wanted long-term change.

The more we talked, the gaps became obvious.

Dave was already training five or six days a week between OrangeTheory and some equipment at home (a far cry from the gym you see today).

The problem wasn’t effort.

He wasn’t tracking his nutrition. He was trying to eat healthy, had some understanding of protein, carbs and fats, but was piecing together information he’d picked up online.

“Probably my biggest weakness in all of this is nutrition and how to eat properly.”

Like a lot of people who are motivated enough to search for answers, he’d tried everything he could find.

Keto. Atkins. Intermittent fasting. Supplements.

At one point he summed up his supplement strategy perfectly:

“I just started taking random shit people told me 😂”

Not really a strategy.

But underneath all the questions about food, calories and training was the actual reason Dave had reached out.

He wanted to change how he saw himself.

“Honestly, I want to transform my body to a muscle machine, have abs and a great fit look where I don't feel bad taking off my shirt.”

Then came the part that mattered:

“Something I've never done in my life and I'm ready to do it now.”

Dave had already lost a huge amount of weight.

He had once been over 300lb.

But losing weight and changing how you see yourself - and ultimately who you are - are not the same thing.

Getting lighter doesn’t automatically erase the image of the person you spent years avoiding in the mirror.

We may not have fully understood it at the time, but that would become a much bigger part of Dave’s story.

I quickly realised the problem was never motivation.

Within days, Dave was logging food.
Within weeks, he was sending training videos, asking questions about tempo, technique and recovery.

He’d go away, try what we discussed and come back with another set of questions.

I was never concerned about whether Dave would work hard enough.

If anything, my job eventually became stopping him from doing too much.

Rest days “somehow” turned into workouts or additional OrangeTheory sessions.

But alongside that, something much more important was happening.

He was learning.

Instead of following another diet, he started understanding calories.

Instead of avoiding carbs, he started understanding how and where they could fit.

Instead of allowing the scale to dictate whether he was succeeding, we started looking at performance, measurements, recovery, photographs and how his body actually felt.

Then came a serious test of trust.

We increased his calories to make sure he was actually fuelling his body for the amount and intensity of training he was doing.

Initially, his weight went up.

Naturally, the old response kicked in.
Should we drop calories?
Does something need to change?
The fear of waking up as “fat Dave” was real.

Thankfully, we didn’t panic.

Soon afterwards, his measurements started telling a very different story.

Dave started realising the scale wasn’t the entire picture.

Eventually he told me:

“I’m just ignoring the weight and feeling much stronger / confident and noticing my body changing.”

Then he said something that, looking back, probably describes the entire philosophy we would eventually build around:

“One area I lack a lot of knowledge in is how my body works and something that I can sustain that isn't diet focused. Looking for life change and what you've shown me is so valuable.”

That was the actual work.

Not getting Dave through another diet.

Teaching him enough about his own body that he could stop depending on one.

After those first few months, I think it’s safe to say we had proof of concept.

Dave was all in.

His strength was increasing. His conditioning was improving.

And, of course, his home gym was growing.

He became obsessed with understanding what he was doing rather than just completing workouts.

He’d send videos - We’d change his stance. Slow his tempo. Reduce weight. Fix technique. Work on stability.
Then build the weight back up.

By November he was messaging me:

“My numbers are up all over the board!!!! I'm focusing on form very carefully and my numbers are just going up each week weight wise. So pumped!”

The goal was still there. He still wanted the body.

But now he was beginning to understand the process that could get him there.

This wasn’t another diet.

This was the lifestyle change he’d been looking for.

And over the years since, Dave has done some objectively ridiculous things.

He’s deadlifted 600 lb.
He’s run a 5-minute mile.
He can knock out 20+ pull-ups.

His body has changed dramatically from the guy who first reached out to me.

But I don’t think any of those things are the biggest win.

The biggest win is that Dave is now in control.

When we want to drop body fat, we know what to do.
When he wants to gain muscle, we know what to do.
When performance becomes the priority, we know what to change.

There isn’t another diet to find.
There isn’t another random supplement someone told him to take.

We understand the system.

And because we understand the system, we can manipulate it depending on what we’re trying to achieve.

That’s a very different place from the guy who originally told me:

“Probably my biggest weakness in all of this is nutrition and how to eat properly.”

And perhaps the best measure of how far he’s come isn’t the 600 lb deadlift or the 5-minute mile.

It’s something much simpler.

Dave originally told me he wanted:

“a great fit look where I don't feel bad taking off my shirt.”

Six years later, anyone who knows Dave will know that getting him to keep his fucking shirt on is probably the bigger challenge.

That might sound like a joke, but there’s something important underneath it.

The guy who spent years uncomfortable with his body finally became comfortable in it.

That is the transformation.

But somewhere along the way, Dave’s transformation became the catalyst for something neither of us had planned.

Our conversations expanded beyond training and nutrition.

We spoke about business, community, behaviour, family, struggles, health, goals and, of course, cybersecurity…which was a completely new world to me.

Late in 2020, Dave sent me a message:

“Obesity is a real big problem in my field.”

I asked him to explain.

He described people in information security sitting in front of desks all day.

High stress. Long hours. On call. Burnout. Depression. Substance abuse.

An industry that placed enormous demands on people’s brains while often completely neglecting the bodies carrying them around.

The more we talked, the more obvious the crossover became.

The problems Dave had experienced weren’t unique to Dave.

There was an entire industry going through many of the same issues.

An industry full of incredibly smart people. They knew how to secure networks, find vulnerabilities, break complex systems, build companies and protect organisations.

But very few had been taught how to operate the human system doing it all.

Suddenly, the problem we’d been solving for one person began to look a lot bigger.

So the question became:

What if we talked about health differently?

What if we stopped trying to make cybersecurity professionals fit into the traditional fitness industry and instead brought health into their world?

Dave organised a webinar for me to speak to his community.

260 people signed up.

To me, that was the second proof of concept.

There was a real need for something that didn’t exist.

So instead of trying to find myself a seat at the table to talk about it, I decided to build my own table.

On June 29th, 2021, I messaged Dave and asked if he wanted to co-host a podcast with me.

Hacking Your Health was born.

The idea was simple:

Take the conversations we’d already been having and have them publicly.

A coach who understood training, nutrition and behaviour change.

A hacker who understood the industry, had lived the problem himself and was still working through what better health and performance looked like in the real world.

We talked about training, nutrition, sleep, stress, mental health, performance, business, cybersecurity and what happens when those worlds collide.

It was never supposed to be health content for everyone. It was health content through the lens of people like Dave.

What started as a conversation between two people has now been downloaded in 158 countries and territories across more than 6,000 cities.

That number still gets me.

Because you can trace all of it back to a Facebook message from one guy, over 3,000 miles away, who wanted some help with his nutrition.

But the podcast wasn’t the end.

The podcast was Hacking Your Health.

The movement, the community, the socials, the events, the content and the coaching became @wehackhealth.

What had started with helping Dave understand his own health had become an attempt to solve the same problem across an entire industry.

The mission became much clearer:

Set the standard for health and human performance in cybersecurity and tech.

Not convince everyone to become bodybuilders.
Not turn every hacker into a fitness influencer.

But give people the systems, environment, education, coaching and community to actually take control of their health.

Dave had become proof of the problem we were trying to solve:

Effort wasn’t the issue.
Direction was.

Then something else happened.

The people who found us didn’t just consume what we were putting out.

They started making it their own.

We started hosting events.

Hackers travelled across the US and eventually across the world to train together, eat together, live together and learn together.

Friendships were built.

People supported each other through shit that had absolutely nothing to do with sets, reps or calories.
People who originally existed as usernames on the internet became actual friends.

Then came Las Vegas, 2023. My first year at DEFCON.
A true collision of worlds.

Dave and I decided to get Hack Health tattoos.

A perfectly sensible decision to mark what we’d been building given the fact that three years earlier, we didn’t even know each other.

Now this thing was a huge part of both of our lives.

And then?

The rest followed.

There are now more than 15 We Hack Health tattoos in the wild.

Which, to me, is insane.

Forget followers.
Forget engagement.
Forget impressions.

When someone believes enough in what you are doing that they want to permanently mark it on their skin, that is something different.

They’re not tattooing a coaching company onto themselves.
They’re marking what it represents to them.
The version of themselves they became.
The standards they changed.
The people they met.
The experiences they had.
The community they found.

That’s the point at which We Hack Health stopped being just a coaching business.

It belonged to the people inside it.

Six years later, Dave isn’t just someone I’ve coached.

He’s my friend. My co-host. My mentor. And Patient Zero at We Hack Health.

We’ve travelled together. Trained together. Built a supplements company. Navigated the craziness of life.

Recorded hundreds of conversations.
Built a community.

And started a movement within an industry that I believe is in need of change.

Dave often says he has nothing to do with the coaching side of what I do.

Technically, he’s right.

He’s still a paying client and doesn’t financially benefit from the coaching business.

But there’s another truth.

I wouldn’t be coaching the people I coach today if Dave hadn’t sent that first message.

Dave’s life changed through the work we did together.
Mine changed because of it too.

And there are hundreds, if not thousands, of lives that have been touched in some way because he decided to send me that message six years ago.

I’m telling Dave’s story today.

But it’s not really a weight-loss story.

Yes, he once weighed 317 lb.
Yes, his body changed.
He got stronger, fitter and leaner.
He deadlifted 600 lb.
Ran a 5-minute mile.
Did 20+ pull-ups.

And yes, eventually he became the guy who felt confident taking his shirt off.

All of those things are evidence of the story.
They’re not the story itself.

Dave never needed to learn how to work hard.

He needed to learn how to turn all of that effort into a system he could understand and sustain.

Once we figured that out, the question became:
How many other people in the cybersecurity industry need this?

Six years later, I don’t think either of us could have imagined where answering that question would take us.
It all traces back to a Facebook message from a hacker in Ohio to a coach in Belfast.

Dave was looking for a coach.
I thought I was getting a client.

Neither of us truly knew what we’d actually found.

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

Hello, NYC. I’ve missed you.

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

Status update. I never got the email notification. I had to speak to 2 managers, show them proof of purchase, shipping info, and an ID because I did not have a QR code for them to scan before releasing the mini to me. 🤯🤯

[Daniel Karistai @hackswithcoffee]

I have to get an email notification from Apple before I can grab my new Mac mini. Support says they’re still getting it ready (it’s a box, just hand it to me?). The only reason why I haven’t just gone is the fear of waiting at the mall for an undetermined amount of time.