Chris Dale

Co-founder & Chief Hacking Officer @ River Security

SANS Principal Instructor · SEC504

Continuous penetration testing · Attack surface management · Incident response

"Hack for good, not evil or greed. Seek to understand, not just to solve."

Latest posts

2026-07-08 Revisiting the Azure Kudu XSS: what Microsoft said Ten years on, the email thread behind the Azure Kudu XSS is more interesting than the bug. A look at the disclosure, why MSRC kept rejecting it, and why they were wrong.
2026-07-07 Coaching Singapore's HTX teams to top-5 finishes at DEF CON 32 What it actually means to coach a CTF team: coordination, challenge triage, and knowing when to sit down and grind the hard ones together.
2026-07-01 I was challenged to hack Norwegian municipalities, and I hit the jackpot Given a challenge to hack Norway's municipalities, I went broad: all 357 at once. The payoff was a third-party AWS-hosted CMS behind 101 webservers, and a lesson about who sets your pentest scope.
2026-06-23 My Qualys attack surface management study, covered by SecurityBrief The Qualys-sponsored ASM research I authored surveyed 200+ security professionals. SecurityBrief Australia covered the findings and the case for unified attack surface management.
2026-05-13 On paying the ransom: my comment to Digi.no on the Canvas case Digi.no asked me to weigh in after Canvas's owner reached an agreement with the attackers behind a breach affecting universities. My short answer: paying feeds the problem.
2026-02-27 Cybersecurity 101 with W3Schools: what you actually need I sat down with W3Schools, one of the largest websites in the world, to cover the fundamentals of cybersecurity: the CIA triad, what hacking really means, the full attack surface, and where to start learning safely.

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Talks & media

Dec 2025 webinar Improving Penetration Tradecraft - Continuous Focus and Updated Methodologies [slides] SANS webcast
Oct 2025 podcast How to See Your Organization Like a Hacker with Chris Dale Hacker Valley Media
Oct 2025 video Why Real Defense Starts with Knowing Your Security Posture | BAS Explained Picus Security
Oct 2025 talk Keynote: Foundations of BAS Picus Security

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Videos

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