While the ChatGPT hype might not be so fervent anymore, many of us have internalised ChatGPT’s capabilities into our everyday life. I tried to provide it ten different types of tasks, and have provided some commentary on how we “might” get ChatGPT to work better for us. (In this post we play with the free…
Category: Digital World
Why Did a White Hat Read a MBA?
Several friends in different social circles had talked up the Quantic MBA since it was free. But I was a cybersecurity professional. Why did I need to read a MBA now? I decided to do it anyway, and I am glad to report I have survived. Why I Did It Perhaps the answer can be…
A Fully Understandable Description (FUD) of PEN-300
*FUD also stands for “Fully UnDetectable”, which describes malware that evades the bulk of commercially used antivirus products. PEN-300 naturally continues where PEN-200 leaves off, for more advanced techniques. After all, OSCP skills alone will not beat modern mitigations; we must try harder. What Do I Really Need Before PEN-300? There has been a trend…
A Response to “What are IT Fundamentals” in Cybersecurity
I have decided to share a post written by Naomi, a CISO, on her views on whether a cybersecurity career requires IT fundamentals. She summarises her position as follows: You don’t NEED to know networking, computer hardware, operating systems, databases, or anything deeply technical to start in cybersecurity. All you need is a high level…
Legacy OSCE: It’s Not Just an Alphabet Soup
A few weeks after I signed up for Cracking the Perimeter (CTP), CTP was retired. Some infosec friends thought I got the short end of the stick, because the course content had not changed in a long while. That is half-true; newer exploit development techniques are now in the while, and CTP only covers the…
The CRTP Review
I think the Pentester Academy site has covered the syllabus of the Certified Red Team Professional (CRTP) which is somewhat of a misnomer because today’s definition of red-teaming goes far beyond what this course covers: Active Directory penetration testing and defence techniques. Note that the attack methodology and tips given by the instructor, Nikhil Mittal,…
The AWAE/OSWE Journey: A Review
Students who are familiar with the PWK/OSCP understand that the field of penetration testing is broad, and at times, overwhelming because there is a lot to learn. Does the AWAE/OSWE come across as significantly less broad? Well, not exactly, because web applications are extremely diverse. Let us take the white box/black box approach to examine…
Pre-OSWE Jitters
Dear Offsec, I’ve never quite felt such a magnitude of ph33r in any examination so far, but the thought of facing a L100 behemoth for 48 hours in a week’s time is frightening indeed. I was a L10 servant in infosec before the AWAE course, and now I’m barely a L30 archer. Spending countless days…
The “Irrational” Human?: Part 3
(Warning: A slightly long read. I have wanted to write about doctrine for the longest of times, but I decided to weave in some of my personal musings about other areas of cybersecurity as well, that are related to doctrine. The result is a long story.) Introduction: The Thought on Business A number of friends…
The “Irrational” Human?: Part 2
“Minimum 8 characters, minimum 1 upper case, 1 lower case, 1 number and 1 special character.” Sounds familiar? Yes, this is a fairly common password policy. Users found the shortest password that could meet these requirements, “P@ssw0rd” and used it so widely that one of the biggest data breaches in Singapore documented how the use…