My Story

Over the years I have done a number of projects, competitions, and certifications that have all helped grow my cybersecurity knowledge and lead me down the path that I am today. But if I had to pick a point where everything kickstarted it would be when I got my first laptop around thirteen years old, and when my father got a foosball table. That foosball table came used from some sale, and as a consquence for its price, it didn’t come with a key to retrieve the foosballs. So, being a curious teen, I researched how to lockpick on my trusty Windows Vista laptop running Internet Explorer. Eventually, I got a vague grasp of lockpicking, and managed to open the lock to the foosball table with a paper clip. This kindled a deep curiousity within me, but I didn’t really want to do lockpicking for a living – yet the idea of breaking into things struck fascinated me.

Fast forward to the end my high school year, I joined a skill center during my senior year, and found potential in my skills with computers and cybersecurity. The first competition that I entered was one of the AFA CyberPatriot competitions. From here, our team did fairly well, especially for a beginner team, which kickstarted my interest into security. Later in the year I moved on to a different competition through the Business Professionals of America where I entered a computer security competition to find that I wasn’t just good. I excelled. From regionals, to states, all the way up to the national competition, I took 10th place in the U.S. in something that I had only just started learning about that year. From that competition, I realized that cybersecurity was the career path that I had been searching for during my high school life, and started to really pursue it.

In the midst of it all though, I learned about a career path that intrigued me the most and tied everything back together to that foosball table that I managed pick. During the compeition, I not only studied hardening skills, but offensive skills in tandem. I started looking into the world of offensive security and found to my surprise, that you could get paid to break into things. And with that epiphany, I had been set loose into the world of offensive security.

So that’s what I’ve been working towards from that moment onward. I’ve always had a knack for computers, and a natural curiosity for how things work. So what better option in the world is there for embracing those qualities? Both security and the art of hacking have become my passion, and I have been taking every step and stride that I can to become a professional in the field. I realize this field is one of the most competitively growing fields, but honestly, that drives me all the more. I might not have the knowledge now, and I might not be a prodigy, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from embracing the hacker culture, it’s this:

Curiosity is the best burning fuel for learning.

Career Development

Public Projects

• whitekr0w’s Pentesting Notes
• Winter Wonderhack 2021 CTF Developer
• Great Lakes Security Conference 2021 CTF Developer
• Overflow to Fall CTF Developer

Personal Projects

• HASSIO configuration and management
• Deployement of public and private containerized applications
• pfSense firewall deployment and policy management (DNS, DHCP, SSL, VPN)
• VLAN home network configuration
• XEN-NG, Proxmox, Hyper-V, and ESXi virtualized labs
• Hand-built Unraid NAS

Achievements

• 10th place in 2019 National BPA Competition in Computer Security

Certifications

• TestOut Security Pro
• TestOut Ethical Hacking Pro
• MTA Security Fundamentals
• MTA Windows Operating System Fundamentals

Competitions