Automate All The Things (Or: Why Your Pipeline Probably Sucks Compared To Mine)

Let’s talk about something near and dear to my hacker heart:

Automation.

Because while your company is still manually deploying from someone’s MacBook Pro with 17 Chrome tabs open, I’m over here letting GitHub Actions run my entire offensive security ecosystem while I drink overpriced cold brew.

🔧 What Did I Actually Automate?

Let’s break it down:

1. Continuous Deployment Pipelines

  • Any push to main triggers a GitHub Action.
  • The pipeline:
  • Checks out the repo
  • SSH’s into the EC2 box
  • Pulls down updated code
  • Activates the Python virtual environment
  • Installs updated dependencies with pip
  • Restarts the Flask service using systemd
  • Result? Code changes are live in under 30 seconds without a single manual SSH session.

2. Intelligent Blog Notifications

Because just deploying blog posts isn’t enough – people need to know.

  • The pipeline compares the last two commits for changes in the /posts directory.
  • If new posts are detected:
  • Extracts the title from the markdown file.
  • Builds a rich Discord embed with:
    • Title
    • Direct URL to the blog post
    • Branding color (Purple obviously – I have a reputation to maintain)
  • Posts it instantly in our announcement channel.

No more “Hey I posted something new” pings in Slack. Automation pings for me.

3. Job Feeds & Threat Intel Scraping

Sure, vulnerability feeds are nice. But what about:

  • Automated InfoSec job scraping
  • Polls RSS feeds every 4 hours.
  • Posts new jobs to Discord with embeds.

  • Deduplication logic prevents repost spam.

  • Clearance job scraping

  • Scrapes ClearanceJobs.com daily at 9AM EST.
  • Parses job titles, companies, and URLs.
  • Posts with the GovSec branding to keep them organized.

Yes, this means my Discord has become a free cyber career board. You’re welcome.

4. Pipeline Logging to Discord

I hate opening the GitHub UI unless I have to. So:

  • Every action job:
  • Posts “Starting job” messages to a dedicated Discord log channel.
  • Posts success or failure with direct GitHub Actions run links.
  • Uses role mentions with allowed_mentions to keep my phone buzzing like a pager in a 90s trauma bay.

🤔 Why Should You Care?

Because if you’re reading this and thinking:

  • “We deploy manually because it’s safer.”

You’re wrong. Manual steps introduce human error every time.

  • “We don’t need blog post announcements.”

Your marketing team disagrees.

  • “We don’t need job feeds.”

Your internal team might appreciate seeing open roles before jumping to LinkedIn recruiters.

  • “We log to Splunk instead.”

Cool. Discord is cheaper.

🧠 Final Thoughts

Automation isn’t about avoiding work.

It’s about eliminating the work that gets in the way of real work – like building new exploits, performing targeted threat hunts, and yes, writing sarcastic blog posts about how superior your pipeline is.

Now, if only GitHub Actions could automate patching your exposed Jupyter notebook instances…

Stay purple, stay automated, stay secure.