The Beginning Link to heading

It all started when li’l ol’ Nathan went to university with aspirations to be a software developer and work for one of the big four, but that quickly changed after I got to my second trimester, took a cyber security course and realized I didn’t actually enjoy writing code as much as I thought I did. I much prefered to see how I could break someone elses code and instead taught myself the basics of reverse engineering and web based hacking.

Although I didn’t find much use in my software related courses - they still provided a solid background that makes everything going forward a little easier. I found my cyber courses really interesting and is what finally pushed me to start pursueing a career in cyber security as I had some great lecturers who really seemed to have a passion for what they taught.

During this time I was still improving on my own skills using online tools, a lot of which I’ve listed below. It was also now my second year and I was starting to think about internships and what I wanted to do with myself. It was at this time I found a company called Summer of Tech, which is a New Zealand based company that gets employers and potential interns in contact. After countless companies applied for by a sheer miracle out of the 15 I applied for I got a response from a Wellington company by the name of ZX Security saying they’d like to interview me and put me through their technical testing phase and after about a week of waiting I got a call back saying they’d like me to intern through the summer at their office.

This is what got me a foot in the door and I will forever be greatful for that as it is notoriously difficult to break into cyber security and this was the perfect oppurtunity to do so. Now here I am.

  • TryHackMe is a free website that has a wide range of boxes to practice on and is where I started.
  • HackTheBox is another website that is slightly more challenging box, but is a very good option.
  • PicoCTF is a CTF website that has a huge selection of challenges that range from basic challenges to full reverse engineering binaries.
  • Pentester Labs is a great website for learning the bare bone basics when it comes to using a linux system or essential web hacking tools.

There are just the websites that I personally used, but there are many more resources out there!