Welcome
Hello, and welcome to my blog. I am Andrianina RAJOELIARIJERY, and this is where I will probably post about cybersecurity labs I do and subjects I researched on.
A little background about me:
tldr:
I messed around with computers as a kid, came to know of Linux, liked it, messed around more, majored in web programming, worked as a web developer, switched to a cloud admin, now trying to do cybersecurity.
I have zero professional experience in cybersecurity, though I did try my hands on various online CTFs (Capture The Flag) and box hacking challenges since high school, with varying amounts of success.
I gained an interest in computers when I was around 5, back when Pentium III was considered cutting-edge. My grandma's PC had one, and every holiday I would end up staying hours on MS Paint because my older sisters didn't want me to bother them. A little sad, I know, but that pushed me to mess around with a computer. And when I say mess around, I mean closing programs, accidentally moving files to other folders, and panicking while trying to move them back. It slowly escalated to me exploring folders and noticing the Documents and Settings, aka Users folder. Though at that time I didn't know exactly why it was important. Please keep in mind that that was in the early 2000s, not like now when kids know how to unlock phones and open YouTube to search for CocoMelon.
A couple years later, our family got our first PC. My parents set up different accounts for us siblings, complete with a password lock. I wanted to listen to my sister's music, but she wouldn't allow me, let alone give me her password. So I improvised, and used my parents' account to explore the Documents and Settings folder. And bam, I could finally listen to her totally not pirated Linkin Park and System of a Down albums.
That was when I realised that learning how a thing works and (ab)using that knowledge could be so rewarding.
More years passed, and it was time to update our more recent Pentium IV PC to the latest Windows OS of the time: Vista. So I went to a totally official and legit OS CD-ROM seller, and ended up seeing a Ubuntu CD. I asked about it, and that was the first time I heard about Linux . I ended up spending a sizeable amount of my pocket money to enter cybercafes to search about it, mainly the different distros and their flavours. Unfortunately, I didn't know virtualization was a thing back then, so I didn't try any of them. When my sisters all moved out, I was finally able to try them on an old discarded laptop. Since then, I've had a personal preference for the Debian family. But what really marked me was Backtrack Linux (now Kali Linux).
Bactrack 5 on a USB stick... I did some very questionable things with it back then, just for the lols and to impress friends. Using SET (Social Engineering Toolkit) to send fake emails and SMS, breaking into the neighbour's WEP-protected wifi with the aircrack-ng suite, using mitmproxy (Man in the Middle Proxy) to spy on the network's activity or flip the pictures in all the clients of a cybercafe upside down, just to name a few.
Yeah, I was a nasty little piece of poop. The fact that I later got phished and lost my first Facebook account was very ironic. And well-deserved, to be honest. That was my wake-up call. Since then I steered clear from even Linux in general until I graduated from high school.
I later decided to major in programming, since I knew my way around a computer and pilot training is very expensive. It wasn't motivated by passion (though I later rather liked it), just a case of wanting a degree to get an “easy job with decent pay”. Nothing too out of the ordinary in my studies either: I learned to code, re-fell in love with Debian, and graduated. I then worked 1 year as a Java Spring Boot and NodeJS developer, before my superiors enrolled me in the AWS re/start formation to transition me into a cloud administrator role.
It was then that my passion for cybersecurity was reignited. Learning about networks, firewalls, access lists, roles, how to setup things on servers; I loved all of it. Though the lessons were from the point of view of an administrator, I couldn't help but wonder how a hacker could avoid or break them. Of course I couldn't find anything that works, but hey, at least I tried. And this time it was with the owner's consent, too!
Now I spend some of my spare time on web CTFs and HackTheBox challenges, trying to learn how the pros do it. I succeeded at a few, and utterly failed at others. But that doesn't change the fact that I will learn what I can.
More on these challenges will be on my future posts. You, readers, will have the priviledge to watch me fumble my way on my journey to learn cybersecurity.
Well, that wasn't long at all. Anyways, see you later!