Case studies

Case studies: real engagements, anonymized.

Each case study describes a real engagement with client-identifying and attacker-useful details removed: the starting condition, the investigation or method, and the verified outcome where it can be published — including what earlier attempts had missed. Published so a prospective client can see how the work actually goes before providing any access.

Basis
Real engagement work, anonymized for publication
Sanitization
Client identifiers and attacker-useful detail removed
Outcomes
Verified through retesting, not declared at cleanup
Author
G. Schad, WordPress and Linux security specialist

The case studies

What is currently published

Incident response · E-commerce

The WordPress Site That Kept Getting Reinfected

Three cleanups by other parties had not held. The fourth engagement treated the recurrence itself as the finding: every persistence layer was enumerated, access was reset, the likely entry condition was closed, and recovery was verified past the points where earlier cleanups had stopped.

  • Reinfection
  • Persistence
  • Verified recovery
Read the reinfection case study

Forensic incident response · Online retail

A Workstation Taken Over Through Remote-Support Tools

A phishing run from an accountant’s Google Workspace account was the first visible sign. The forensic record showed three weeks of remote control over the accountant’s workstation through FleetDeck and two ScreenConnect clients, and tied the mailbox abuse to that machine by address, device and timing. The case study covers the evidence, the correlation, what containment cost and the legal follow-up.

  • Forensics
  • Remote-support tool abuse
  • Google Workspace
Read the workstation takeover case study