THE KITBAG: TOOLS I TRUST

People always ask what tools I use, as if the tools matter more than the operator.
They do not. But a sharp blade still cuts cleaner.

I keep my kit organized the way an old locksmith keeps his picks. Everything has a purpose. Everything has a specific type of silence it can cut through. I am listing the core tools here with the understanding that the list will evolve. New devices arrive. Old utilities earn scars. And over time the kit begins to reflect the mind that assembled it.

These are the tools that sit within reach at all times.
The ones that can turn a dead system into a map.

Hardware

ThinkPad L15 Gen 2
Reliable, quiet, moddable. A field computer built for real work, not corporate pageantry.

HackRF One
For when the airwaves hide more truth than the wires.

Flipper Zero
A pocket knife for modern frequency space. Useful when you know what you are doing. Dangerous if you do.

ESP32 boards
For building custom presence detectors, entropy sniffers, silent nodes, and experimental handhelds that mimic extinct tech.

Arduino Uno R4 WiFi + PN532
Perfect for RFID recon and deep tag analysis. Blackglass Node runs here when I need it.

Assorted CAN bus adapters
For the nights when a car’s brain needs to be interrogated.

Software

Burp Suite
Standard for a reason. Hosts the dialogues that most systems never expect you to initiate.

Ghidra
A cathedral made from reverse engineering. Every firmware dump becomes a confession.

Wireshark
Network truth serum.

Ollama, Jan, LM Studio
Local AI stacks for code auditing and anomaly detection without leaking your discoveries to the cloud.

nmap and masscan
The binoculars and the floodlight.

Linux (EndeavourOS and custom Arch spins)
Because the operating system should never tell you what it is allowed to do.

Custom Scripts
I write many of my own tools for reconnaissance, scraping, log correlation, and network cartography. Some publishable. Some not.

Consumables

• A backpack that looks like it contains nothing important

• A USB that contains too much

• A notebook full of diagrams written at 3 AM

• Tape you forget about until you need it

• Loose screws that you swear were important but cannot remember why

The point of a kitbag is not to look impressive.
The point is to be prepared for the moment when a system reveals its real face and you have ten seconds to understand what it means.

There is no perfect loadout.
There is only what works when the pressure is real.