Cybersecurity engineer researching AI-assisted security operations by building and running the whole stack himself. Field notes, wrong turns included.https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/en-cahttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/ai-homelab-two-years-in-a-build-note/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/ai-homelab-two-years-in-a-build-note/Thirty-plus services, two Proxmox nodes, one operator, and the two outages that taught me more than any tutorial did.Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/threat-intel-pipeline-kev-epss-in-production/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/threat-intel-pipeline-kev-epss-in-production/Six explicit stages, a scorer that refuses to trust CVSS on its own, and what it actually takes to turn nineteen feeds into three digests a day without drowning in noise.Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/the-npm-worm-in-your-homelab-surviving-supply-chain-attacks/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/the-npm-worm-in-your-homelab-surviving-supply-chain-attacks/How JavaScript supply-chain attacks actually work — from event-stream to the 2025 self-replicating npm worm — and the handful of habits that keep your homelab from becoming a casualty.Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/automation-soar-closing-the-loop/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/automation-soar-closing-the-loop/The boring 80% of response is automatable. SOAR concepts, playbooks, and enrichment-and-triage automation at home with Shuffle, n8n, and TheHive — with guardrails.Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/detection-engineering-detections-as-code/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/detection-engineering-detections-as-code/Treat detections like software — version-controlled, tested, and tuned. Sigma rules, the detection lifecycle, the ADS framework, and validating with Atomic Red Team.Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/threat-intelligence-that-isnt-just-a-feed/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/threat-intelligence-that-isnt-just-a-feed/Intelligence is a process, not a list of bad IPs. The intel lifecycle, strategic/operational/tactical levels, IOCs vs TTPs, and running MISP or OpenCTI at home.Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/threat-hunting-hypotheses-not-alerts/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/threat-hunting-hypotheses-not-alerts/Hunting is what you do when nothing alerted. The PEAK loop, the Pyramid of Pain, and using MITRE ATT&CK to turn a hunch into a repeatable hunt.Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/building-a-home-soc-the-architecture/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/building-a-home-soc-the-architecture/The data pipeline behind every SOC — log sources, collection, normalization, a SIEM, detections, and alerting — and how to stand up a real one on a single homelab box.Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/why-run-a-soc-at-home/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/why-run-a-soc-at-home/What a security operations practice actually is, why you'd build one in a homelab, and the five disciplines this series walks through.Sat, 09 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/starter-projects-worth-your-first-weekend/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/starter-projects-worth-your-first-weekend/Five AI-homelab projects graded from easy to ambitious — what each one teaches you and why it's a good rung to climb.Sat, 02 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/securing-the-box-ssh-the-physical-access-truth/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/securing-the-box-ssh-the-physical-access-truth/Harden SSH the right way — then understand why physical access is the security boundary that actually matters for a homelab.Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/getting-the-vm-ready/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/getting-the-vm-ready/Where your homelab actually lives: choosing a hypervisor, provisioning a base Linux VM, sizing it, snapshots, and first-boot setup.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/choosing-your-stack-subscriptions-apis-local-models/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/choosing-your-stack-subscriptions-apis-local-models/The three ways to get AI into your homelab, honest trade-offs, the model landscape, and what I'd pick at each budget.Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/ai-foundations-without-the-hype/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/ai-foundations-without-the-hype/Models, tokens, context windows, and agents — the vocabulary that actually matters, in plain English.Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/start-here/https://kevalchhatbar.fyi/writing/start-here/What an AI homelab actually is, what you'll get out of one, and the realistic baseline you need to begin.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT