Skip to content
All writing

Tagged

#MoodHaven

6 posts

Technical · 9 min

Ten Rounds of Breaking My Own App: The Tools, and the Lessons

The bespoke tooling that made a ten-round self-pentest possible, the attacks that failed, the full round-by-round scoreboard, and the lessons that outlive the app. Part 4 of a four-part series.

Read
Technical · 11 min

The Flagship Encryption Feature That Never Actually Turned On

The eighth round of a self-pentest found MoodHaven's flagship 'encrypted at rest' feature had never engaged on any build — then a custom attack tool and a fix-the-fixes round closed the campaign. Part 3 of a four-part series.

Read
Technical · 11 min

The Bugs I Found Attacking My Own Journaling App — and the Bugs My Fixes Created

The confirmed vulnerabilities from a ten-round self-pentest of MoodHaven Journal: a readable database, silently lost edits, keys leaking over the LAN — and the critical bugs my own fixes introduced. Part 2 of a four-part series.

Read
Technical · 8 min

How I Tried to Break My Own Encrypted Journaling App — Ten Times

Why I ran a ten-round penetration test against my own privacy-first journaling app — the attack lab, the AI-orchestrated workflow, and the rules of engagement. Part 1 of a four-part series.

Read
Technical · 9 min

Changing a Password Is a One-Liner — Unless You Encrypt Everything

Crash-safe master-password rotation in a zero-knowledge journaling app: re-encrypting across two layers and two runtimes with a single atomic flip a kill -9 can't corrupt.

Read
Technical · 18 min

Seven Months of Vibe Coding: How I Built a Privacy-First Journal App with an AI Pair Programmer

Building MoodHaven Journal from scratch as a non-developer — zero-knowledge encryption, a Wear OS companion, peer sync, and what it actually takes to learn while you ship.

Read

Newsletter

Notes from building & climbing

New essays and short notes — privacy-first software, AI, security, and the occasional rambling from the trail. Every other week, no filler.