The beginning of a new era; My run-in with computer security testing.
Good evening all, I intended to make this blog a placeholder, but instead I’ll go ahead and kinda inch it along in some direction as I go. All my life I’ve been fascinated and captivated by machines, computers, and technology in general. Instead of recess in my Jr. high and high school years, I was on the computer, working with the Norton Safe Web program and testing our school district’s IT resources, rating web site safety and reading CNET blogs by Brian Cooley. I was a nerdy kid, with nerdy passions, that would take off from age 15 onward. I got accepted into a technical school under cisco’s CCNA program. While I never took the test, I still use the commands from time to time. College however, was too boring to me, so I ended up on the service desk of a financial company for a couple years. Would I remain there forever? hopefully not, I thought, as I left the job a year and a half in and headed back to school to find my passion, Infosec.
This led me to go through college with the aim of becoming a cybersecurity major. While I was able to accumulate all kinds of success along the way, from honor societies, to internships, to connections and an open invitation to travel the world, (more on that later,) It all came with a price tag. Money, expenses, and my own sense of morality. I got my first taste of the world’s drama that send me spiraling down in my career. I tried over and over to apply for jobs out of college, but my own morals and failures pushed me away from my net of hundreds upon hundreds of dedicated, like minded individuals. My illusion of fame was a problem, pushing an agenda for others that contradicted my core self; making it on my own is what the decision came to.
I picked myself up after my final, catastrophic year of college, degree in hand. I dusted off my clothing, and decided to forge ahead into what I knew how to do best, tech my way into something. On the up and up was food delivery through apps. Doordash, Postmates and the like. I started with that, and from there learned the art of running my own business. A few months later, I found myself working for a restaurant, helping them implement Doordash into their service queue and finding the bugs in the program along the way. While my outer shell said delivery, I still had that inner passion for tech in the background. I’d listen to podcasts from my favorite security professionals on my rides to and from the restaurant, and dream of my future life where one day I’d leave all this behind to rekindle my IT dream once more.
Before, it was easy. Find a glitch in a game, use it to be faster than anyone else. This was a talent show some have come to know as video game speedrunning. I reguarded myself as one of the best at it, able to hold a candle to many of my competitors through my tenacity. I could see things in the games that others could not see. The glitches, the bugs, and the exploits that typical software engineers would find with thorough QA testing and RAM analysis, all of this was in plain sight to me. Working a few days in a row, I could come across a new way to play through a game using only brute force techniques and a focus unlike anything I can describe. Times for many of my games got shorter, and by the end of it I had become a speedrunner of over 30 games, with writeups for glitches in about 15. My travels introduced me to world class talent, from the east cost of the US to the west, from the UK to Brazil. I never had the typical college experience, what I had was beyond that, and there are some nights I think back and would give up anything to have it back.
Alas, time moves on. Work with the restaurant had changed in the pandemic. We were all struggling a bit. Work had nearly layed me off, until I was hired by the franchise’s other location. There I toiled for the next few months, little place to expand aside from my personal life. I moved away from my folks and into a cozy apartment, just me and the pets. Work as unrelenting as it is, continued to distract from what I felt was my inner destiny once again. Atthe end of December I felt I had enough. By 2021 I would have a couple Microsoft certs and skills from this new program called TryHackMe. I knew from all the talks I listened to, I needed to specialize in something to move on.
Thinking back, I found my gift again, A few bugs at work with the software, identified and reported, an interesting situation also arose from a command conflict I found in an app I regularly use. Upon reporting it to the company, with a neatly organized writeup, it came back as something a pentester already informed them on. The spark was burning, and a fire had started, specifically around DOM related exploits in software. The XSS forest picked it up, Burped it out Suite, and here I am now, finding a vulnerability on the open web per week under bug bounty programs. With any luck, this winding journey is coming to an end, with an outlet for my passion on the horizon, and destiny knocking at the door.
I’d say that sums up the about page. I’ll be posting interesting updates here as I learn the art of blogging in the computer security sphere. Until next time, stay safe.
