A Conversation With Adam Pointon

Check out KnocKnoc here: https://ul.live/knocknoc_yt In this episode of Unsupervised Learning, I sit down with Adam to discuss KnocKnoc, a platform created to solve just-in-time network access and drastically reduce attack surfaces. Join us as we explore how hiding services behind pre-authentication modernizes default-deny security policies and keeps your infrastructure completely invisible to attackers until trust is proven. What we talk about: The Evolution of Port Knocking: How Knock-Knock was born out of traditional port knocking and evolved to completely hide network services, eliminating pre-authentication attack surfaces. Security vs. Obscurity: A deep dive into the "security through obscurity" debate and how hiding the mechanism while requiring a specific "key" drastically increases the cost, effort, and time required for attackers to map a network. Real-World Infrastructure Shielding: Practical use cases for the platform, from protecting frequently targeted services like Citrix from zero-day exploits to completely cloaking cloud development and test environments from the public internet. Self-Defending Endpoints at Scale: Expanding just-in-time access controls beyond edge firewalls directly to host machines, including Linux, Windows, and even legacy systems like HP-UX and Solaris SPARC. The Future of Universal Policy: How this foundational default-deny approach paves the way for universal security policies, translating human-readable business rules into strict access controls across all network levels and data layers. 00:00 - Introduction 01:54 - How vulnerability data is delivered directly into developer workflows 05:02 - The underlying technology combining AI and static analysis 07:02 - Real-world workflow examples using the Log4j vulnerability 09:53 - Securing legacy containers and managing golden images 17:42 - Applying context and guardrails to autonomous AI coding agents 26:00 - The future of automated security and the evolution of test-driven development 29:27 - Upcoming events and where to find more information about Endor Labs Subscribe to the newsletter at: https://danielmiessler.com/subscribe Join the UL community at: https://danielmiessler.com/upgrade Follow on X: https://x.com/danielmiessler Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielmiessler/