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Odin Midtgard

Commodity malware, from the sample to the alert. Detection, investigation and automation from a Wazuh lab in Norway.

About Me

Cybersecurity student and former IT operations professional. I investigate commodity malware, build detections and automate the repeatable parts of analyst work.

Before focusing fully on cybersecurity, I worked with operational IT environments administering Windows Server, Fortinet firewalls, networking, on-premises services, backups, and SMB infrastructure. That experience gave me a practical foundation in how real systems are deployed, maintained, broken, and repaired.

Outside university, I run a homelab built around Proxmox, Docker, Wazuh SIEM, segmented networks, firewall rules, zero-trust access, and 15+ monitored endpoints. I use it for detection engineering, log analysis, alert investigation, infrastructure experiments, automation, and security research.

My bachelor thesis, “From Headshots to Info Stealers: An Exploration Of Malware In Game Cheats”, investigates malware distribution through gaming-cheat ecosystems using static malware analysis, cryptographic hashes, VirusTotal intelligence, and threat-intelligence correlation.

I also build my own cybersecurity tools and interfaces using technologies including Python, Bash, PowerShell, Go, Git, and GitHub, increasingly incorporating AI-assisted and agentic development workflows.

I enjoy both sides of security: understanding how attackers think and building systems that make attacks harder to execute, easier to detect, and faster to investigate.

My long-term goal is a cybersecurity role where malware, networks, firewalls, endpoint security, monitoring, investigation, and hands-on technical problem solving are part of the everyday work.

What I work with

The homelab is where most ideas get battle-tested. I run Wazuh for SIEM monitoring, Pi-hole for DNS control, Twingate for ZTNA, Proxmox for virtualization, and a rotating stack of services in Docker. If a workflow can be scripted, it gets scripted.

  • Languages: Python, Go, Bash, and whatever gets the job done.
  • Platforms: Linux, Windows Server, Proxmox, Docker.
  • Security tools: Wazuh, Suricata, Wireshark, Volatility, Burp Suite.
  • Automation: CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, custom agents.

Cybersecurity interests

  • Active in CTF competitions and practical penetration testing training.
  • Malware analysis and reverse engineering — static and dynamic triage.
  • Threat hunting, detection engineering, and SIEM rule development.
  • OSINT methodology and reconnaissance automation.
  • AI-assisted security research and red-teaming workflows.

Projects and learning focus

QbitX is my personal security engineering workbench — a collection of browser-based tools for OSINT, binary triage, packet analysis, flashcards, and more. Every tool is built to solve a real problem I encountered during study or CTF play.