Storytelling as a knowledge share is fundamental to human culture. Drama and story refinement are required to make the knowledge easy to remember and spread.
As for you being convinced, my personal experience is that this story is entirely believable. Many of us in security have stories we cannot share that would make this one look like a Saturday morning cartoon.
Dramatization has nothing to do with credibility. It is a memory facilitation technique. Because you the reader can remove the drama and distill the critical story elements for further inspection of credibility.
Credibility is found in the citations, which here is only the story teller. As that is only one data point, I totally understand doubting its credibility because one needs more citations and voices for proof.
Further, I never stated I found the story creditable. I was operating from a believability standpoint. Inferring one's experience to weight if the story could possibly be believed. You shared you found it hard to believe based on it's dramatization. Where I shared that I found it completely plausible based on my experience.
And that is my main argument, that in this equation drama shouldn't be used as a weight. Positive or negative.
Edit: For the folks down voting this. Please don't conflate dramatization with persuaion, propaganda, or fake news. Dramatization is a tool used in those techniques.
I agree, quite a bit of this reads like fiction. The scenario itself suggests an uncommon level of competence, but assuming that's true then the rest is pretty believable for the same reason, if given to some dramatic license.
> The DFIR lead leaned down next to my ear and whispered, "No one in Accounts Payable ever runs Powershell..."
> Alright... That last part had a bit of dramatization added to it.
I interpretted the "last part" to mean the part where the DFIR whispers in his ear.
I'm still not convinced this is real. It smells like fiction.