Who was the target audience for the long-form article? It has
some technical details, but they appear to be used more for decorative effect. E.g. the string
daa0 c7cb f4f0 fbcf d6d1 from the hexdump is eventually revealed to correspond to
C:\Windows, but isn't actually explained. I was able to come up with the following Python for the obfuscation:
[hex((i + 153) ^ ord(c)) for i, c in enumerate(r'C:\Windows')] but most of your readers probably just see a jumble of letters and numbers they're told has some significance, but which appears incomprehensible to them.
Did you do testing with focus groups to determine whether the longer article helped people "understand how these intrusions are actually working" or whether it just made readers aware that they don't understand?