I’ve been building personal web applications since 2005. I have a long history of avoiding tracking / spyware / ads… and also making money. I’ve built forum software and image boards from scratch, photography sites, and a lot more. But I want to share a few of my current sites that I run, as I don’t generally go into self promotion mode — but hey, these aren’t selling anything!
I’ll list them in descending order of how much I think I think they fit public use cases.
Robert Lerner Blog
You know this one because you’re on it! I blog about security (physical, application, payment card), engineering (software, CAD) , wine making, business ideas, how to drive, and an occasional troll. This site has taken a ton of different forms, but I ended up on WordPress as it’s the least friction way to get stuff up there. I’ve been running this since 2009.
Camera History Project
https://camerahistoryproject.com
My wife and I have been collecting cameras since 2012, driving all over the US and Canada. I likely have about double what’s listed on hand, but I have put up 106 different cameras we bought and shared there.
Bit4.Me
Back before you could send files via Signal, I built Bit4.me, a very simple (though incredibly robust) file sharing site… You upload a file, and you get a short alphanumeric code you can give to somebody else to have them download it. It wasn’t designed to secure the files well and isn’t for privacy related activities. Over the years, I’ve added a link shrinker, paste-to-file, chat rooms, code bin, and a lot more — though I’ve recently re-released this site and removed a lot of the fluff from it. I started this one in 2015.
Header Inspector
Back before I moved into managing security teams, I used to do consulting to them — primarily in the realms of application security and vulnerability management. During this time, I built a tool that does an inspection of common, security related HTTP headers and gives you a report. I also did a scan of the Alexa Top 1M websites (back when that was still a list) and used my findings as the core of a talk about security headers at CypherCon in Milwaukee, WI. I started this in 2019, and it’s still a decent tool for checking your sites and learning about headers.
Authentication Test
https://authenticationtest.com
I already mentioned doing appsec work, but back when I used to teach customers and even train colleagues of mine on how to use automated authentication to web platforms, I needed a reliable way to educate on how to address various mechanisms I ran into while doing my job. I also needed a place safe to test it against. Enter Authentication Test — this site tries to emulate the sign-in process that you see on most sites, username, password, sometimes you have to do a CAPTCHA or similar. Maybe TOTP MFA, or HTTP Basic / Digest auth. This site does all of it. Of all the sites I’ve built here, it gets incredible traffic and it has been used in Microsoft public documentation, Bitwarden testing, and has had people create YouTube videos and Reddit posts about it. This site had started in 2019 as well.
Like any of these?
Cool — You won’t find a “Pricing” button on all of them, these are all tools & services I run to help address things that I need. Let me know if you get use out of them or what you think I should do to improve them.
If you made it this far, the dude at the top of this page isn’t me. It’s what AI thinks I look like based on projects I used it for.
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