Cybersecurity

Name – Chaitanya Krishna Chauhan

ID – 2020A4PS1869P

Who am I?
I’m Chaitanya (Codename - ckc9759) from Patna, Bihar, a 4th yearite pursuing
mechanical engineering. I’m passionate about Cyber security and enjoy
exploiting vulnerabilities. You can find me anywhere with my codename !

What is Cyber security?

In simple terms, it is a digital way of protecting confidential or personal data on
your devices from getting in the hands of hackers/robbers which could utilize it
for a fraud or theft.

How did I start?

When I started, I never thought that I have to learn cyber security for my
placement, career or enhancing my skills. It started as a fun activity. I got to
know about CTFs (Capture the flag) which have vulnerable programs and
websites which need to exploited to get points. I played a few CTFs and then
started learning about Cyber security gradually.

How can you as a fresher/beginner start learning?

The answer is pretty simple, be curious and keep googling stuff. Cyber security
is a very vast topic and requires a lot of time and effort to be proficient at.
Some of the key points you can follow:
  The best way to learn in my opinion is playing CTFs. You know nothing
about Cyber security, just participate.
 Go to any hacking website, pick any challenge and just see the
walkthrough. Once you get the hang of it, you can practice some on your
own.
 You will get some clear insights in one or two games. You will learn about
Cryptography which is the base of cyber security. You will learn about
web exploitation that is a quite big topic nowadays. You will learn about
binary exploitation and reverse engineering which is the disassembly of
any program.
 Once you have done this much, try reading articles on web and reading
writeups, you will get more and more resources and approach.
 Taking a free or paid course on cyber security will only teach you some
theoretical knowledge but once you know how to apply it, you are
unstoppable.
Resources are provided at the end to help you all. If you want to skip the para,
here are some key points.

Common mistakes
 People find cyber security is cool but never really know how to start. The
hardest part is to start, once you start learning, you will enjoy the path.
 Focus on clearing your concept and knowledge rather than solving any
challenge by guessing or brute force.
 The learning part will get boring if you don’t apply it so be active, keep
looking for bug bounty programs, hacking websites and reading news
about Cyber events happening globally and also the recent incidents.
 No prior knowledge in coding can make the path difficult and confusing
so would recommend having some basic knowledge of a programming
language (C, python) or learn it parallelly.

Resources and tips

 Having a company might help so ask your friends too and try to solve
the hacking challenges together.
 Just like SDE -> Coding, Cybersecurity -> CTFs.
 Don’t give up! It takes time.
 https://github.com/ckc9759/CTF_resources
 https://ctftime.org/
 https://book.hacktricks.xyz/welcome/readme
 https://tryhackme.com/
 https://overthewire.org/wargames/
 https://ctflearn.com/
 https://play.picoctf.org/
 John Hammond, Liveoverflow, Almond force YouTube channels