Someone Actually Plagiarized Me

Background

I guess I’m a serious writer now if I’m getting plagiarized? I always thought that only happened to book authors, but apparently even small outfits like ourselves here at test.local can experience it.

I have now been plagiarized

My writeup: https://happycamper84.medium.com/exploiting-active-directory-tryhackme-walkthrough-aff708643d3a

The plagiarizer: https://medium.com/@aenoshrajora/exploiting-active-directory-tryhackme-walkthrough-f45fc11f6dc3

I shot the below report to Medium upon finding this:

“They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I guess I’m mildly flattered. Aenosh Rajora copy/pasted my TryHackMe Walkthrough that I wrote and posted to Medium 13 Feb 2024. They plagiarized it 25 Apr 2025.

I saw it because when I swung by Medium it was at the top of the recommended articles. I opened it, thought it looked awfully familiar, and went back and checked my walkthrough. It is a word for word copy/paste with themselves listed as the author.

They even left my hyperlinks in, for example if someone clicks on CRTP on what they copy/pasted they’ll visit my review of the CRTP exam I posted on Medium 9 Dec 2021 here: https://happycamper84.medium.com/certified-red-team-professional-crtp-exam-course-my-experience-4907dd6f5edc

Thank you for any help you can provide. I don’t care if people copy/paste the commands I post, I post cheat sheets after all, but I do take offense at someone copy/pasting my entire walkthrough and then claiming they wrote it.”

I then noticed that this guy had plagiarized another one of my TryHackMe walkthroughs, so I sent another report to Medium:

“I hit send on my first report of Aenosh Rajora too soon, it’s worse than I said. I looked at their profile and noticed they had plagiarized a second one of my TryHackMe Walkthroughs word for word, they even copied the screen shots from me.

I am letting you know because I have to assume that Aenosh Rajora plagiarized almost everything they posted to Medium, just from other sources besides only myself. I don’t want Medium getting sued if Aenosh Rajora plagiarizes from a bigger outfit like Trimarc’s or SpectreOp’s company blogs. I really like Medium and I appreciate the easy to use platform you provide myself and everyone.

I’m including the link to my walkthrough that I posted 4 Feb 2024. I included a link to Aenosh Rajora’s page. I was going to include a link to their plagiarized article, but I see Medium has already suspended their account.

Thank you for taking quick action on my first report!”

This is an old screenshot, taken the day after my first report to Medium. The account is now gone.

I give Medium a lot of credit. They were quick and responsive and it looks like that dude’s account is now gone completely. I don’t know why that guy couldn’t just use ChatGPT like a normal college student. I’m not getting paid for this, it’s a side hobby that’s related to my job. I post a lot of information, cheat sheets, howtos, etc out there that everyone can freely read and copy/paste command syntax from. I post my functions on GitHub for everyone. I don’t paywall anything, it’s against my outlook and world view to do so.

Just don’t copy/paste my entire thing and re-post it on your account claiming you wrote it. I don’t think that’s a big ask.

About Me

So who are we anyway here at test.local? I don’t normally throw this around because I don’t want to sound arrogant, like a shameless self-promotor, or that I am making an ‘appeal to credentials’. I’d rather let the information I post stand on its own, for example my points regarding so called “effective permissions”.

My Experience

I have been working in Windows domain environments my entire adult life, in job roles such as

• COMSEC
• Junior netadmin
• Junior sysadmin
• Change Management, procurement, and facilitator of the process
• White glove service desk for VIPs, ‘The Smartcard Guy’, troubleshooter in general
• Alt ISSM, ‘The GPC Guy’, and auditing
• ‘General IT Guy’, aka whatever random IT tasks the org needed done
• ‘Operations’, aka tracking things, updating calendars, coordinating, making sure folks had what they needed, etc
• General ‘Cyber Guy’, trying to get the org to a more mature level security wise

My Education

• A Bachelor’s degree in ‘Computer Networks & Cybersecurity’ from UMGC
• A Master’s degree in ‘Cybersecurity & Information Assurance’ from WGU
• 10 CompTIA certifications
• 8 SANS certifications
• Various ‘cyber’ certs like CISSP, CISM, CEH, CND, SSCP, etc
• 8 Microsoft certifications; focusing on Windows endpoints, AD, Azure, and Entra ID
• 100% hands on exams; CRTP, eJPT, PJPT, Administrating AD DS, SAL1, & the CRTP Renewal Exam
• Lots of time in the home lab working on Hyper-V, hybrid AD, Azure, etc

My education that matters

However there’s a reason why the only exam reviews I have written were about hands on ones, and the one review of ISC2’s free Certified in Cybersecurity exam; 90% of what I know and 99% of what I can do came from hands on exams, TryHackMe, various ranges like Slayer Labs, home labbing, and on the job troubleshooting.

Titles

I’m not big on titles and rank, especially my own. The one title I like best though was given to me by a vendor of a 250k a year AD auditing tool who was apparently quite butt hurt that I keep pointing out how to do that stuff for free. They called me a “TukTuk driver” here.

That vendor could have at least included my full post, or better yet a link to the entire thread. There, I fixed it for them. You’re welcome.

I was also being rather diplomatic when I said “Gold finger may give you poor results”. Had I been lowering both barrels, so to speak, I’d have said “it costs 250k a year and in our testing completely missed multiple escalation paths”. The kicker? That trial version only let us run a single query … and it got that wrong.

Never mind, I guess I lowered both barrels here.

As someone who has spent a few years of their life living and working in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th world countries where Tuk-Tuks are heavily used I actually take that as a high compliment, even though I know they didn’t intend it as one.

Besides, Tuk-Tuks are affordable, get good MPG, and have an impressive amount of cargo capacity given their size. They’re efficient, utilitarian, and get the job done … much like the PowerShell I have written that does for free what that company charges 250k annually to kinda sorta do.

I say “kinda sorta” because I tried out their very limited free trial awhile back. It only did one thing, and it got that wrong.

My Hobbies

I don’t spend all my time working in IT, doing TryHackMe or CTFs, self-studying for exams, or home labbing … just a lot of it. I’m also into long distance running, going to the gym, reading/learning world history from around 1900 to the present, and playing open world PC games when I want to take a break.

Of course I also have Mishky, our adorable little kid who asks crazy questions that kick off lab projects like this one. As she gets older she’s not into park trips like she used to be, but she’s still fun to hang out with. Here in a few years I will have to start gently teaching her more about IT. She’s still too young to know the difference between WiFi and our ISP.

So what’s the point of all this?

• I’m not into fancy titles
• I have formal education and certifications, but I’m not into the whole ‘appeal to credentials’
• I know that many of my cheatsheets, TryHackMe writeups, etc show up in Google search results

Hence I tend to state things on here that I know because I have tested them out in the lab, on TryHackMe, worked on them at work, etc. I tend to leave my opinion out of these posts. Hence if I say that a certain vendor is wrong about something it’s because they are and I have demonstrated it in the lab.

Summary

I don’t doubt that Aenosh Rajora will simply start another Medium account or one on another blog site entirely and go back to plagiarizing, but at least the first one, or the most recent one, is gone. I still can’t believe they plagiarized me. I’m a nobody. I’m a mere IT Techie, not a CEO or even a CIO, CISO, or other overpaid ‘C Suite’ big shot who got their job because they’re a board member’s nephew. I’m not an “influencer”, we don’t even have 500 followers on here.

I cite others if I even used their TryHackMe writeup for hints. I cite Microsoft Learn, SprectreOps, etc if I use information from them in one of my howtos. I don’t even claim I came up with terms like ‘The Credential Theft Shuffle’ and I cite the folks that did. There’s a reason most of my writeups have a References section at the bottom, and it’s not just to give credit where credit is due. Its so readers know I’m not pulling this stuff out of my proverbial 4th point of contact and so I can go back years later and see where I found something.

In closing I know neither plagiarizing me nor calling me a “Tuk Tuk driver” were meant as compliments, but dammit I’m taking them both as such. If I’m worth plagiarizing then I’m a halfway decent writer, right?

As always feedback, opinions, etc are always welcome! Feel free to leave comments, even if it’s to tell me that I’m a “Tuk Tuk Driver”.