New Year. Who Dis?

2023 was an interesting year. I moved back to Baton Rouge to keep an eye on my mom. I got promoted (title bump) and got a pay bump. I continued to be the Subject Matter Expert (SME) on a good number of things. However, the last 6 months have been rough work-wise. Incident Response (IR) has been very busy and tough responding with a limited number of people, but finally got better in December. I’ve taken much needed time off. I was off for the last 9 days of the year and I’ve been taking a lot of Fridays off (had PTO to burn). The pay bump has allowed me to pay off some bills and buy some more toys. I bought a kayak a couple of months ago and I also took up fly fishing. Both have helped me decompress and not think about work at all. I significantly reduced the amount of video games I was playing (staring at a screen all day and night was not doing my health any favors). Fly fishing is my newest addiction (slamming it just like I did scuba diving). I even set up an Instagram for all the fish I’ve been catching. I’ll need to work on the website. 

I’ve continued to try to learn new things. I’ve been trying to learn as much cloud as possible (AWS specifically). I took an AWS Security accelerator with VetsInTech (got me AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner) and also took an AWS Solutions Architect Associate course from VetsInTech as well. I still try to do the weekly BHIS webinars/hour long trainings. Which leads me to the new year and new things.

I am looking forward to this new year. I’ll be taking an AI/ML course (another accelerator from VetsInTech). I think this may finally get me motivated to apply for my Masters and maybe go do something else other than IR in Cybersecurity. I’m also signed up for another Web App Pentesting course. There are also a number of events for the clubs I joined for fly fishing and kayak fishing. I’ll need to do some schedule deconfliction and make sure I’m not signing myself up for too much, but I’m looking forward to this year in general. I keep saying I need to get better about updating this site/blog, but I think once I get a rhythm going and have more content (AI/ML, cloud, web app pentesting), including for the outdoor site, it will be easier to more consistently update this. We shall see. For whoever else is reading this, I wish you a Happy New Year! 

BTL1 so far…

Work got busy with Log4J and a few other incidents so my December 2021 and January 2022 were particularly brutal. Makes me want to take a break from incident response. I had to file an extension for BTL1 and I’m working through it. I’ve got about a month left to get through the course and do the exam. I’ll be trying to focus on this and not do too much else extra, but there are always other shiny courses to distract me if I’m not careful….

I’m currently at the Digital Forensics section. The phishing section was particularly useful and had direct applicability at work. For me, I feel like I’ve learned the most so far in the Phishing Analysis section and the Digital Forensics section. I’ll give my overall thoughts on the course when I’m done, but so far, I feel it’s been worthwhile spending my own money on it.

What I’m working on

I had originally meant to post this a few months ago. Life happened and I got distracted (that seems to happen a bit).

Training is very important to me. Looking back on the last couple of years at my current employer, I’ve always tried to regularly do some sort of training. I came into the field with no experience except a degree in Computer and Information Science with a minor in Cybersecurity and several certifications. I am sometimes amazed that I got the job I did. I have definitely noticed gaps in my knowledge (it’s impossible to know everything in this broad field) particularly on the forensics side of things (I mostly do the IR portion of DFIR). During the pandemic, I’ve had problems with staying motivated for training, but spending money on courses tends to help actually get some training done, even (maybe especially) when work isn’t paying for it.

I have a ton of stuff in the queue to be able to do for training (both red and blue team type of training), but lately I’ve been focusing more on the blue side (partly because one of my flex goals at work is to do a Blue team/Incident Response certification by the end of the year). I’ve mainly been working on the BTL1 training from Security Blue Team since that seemed to hit some of the gaps I have and be pretty hands-on. The phishing section has actually been directly applicable lately at work and knowing that Powershell could give us a hash helped on that investigation. Recently @HuskyHacksMK put out a Practical Malware Analysis and Triage course that has been meshing well with what I’m learning in the BTL1 training. That course is on TCM Academy‘s site. I also have nearly all of the courses there except for the Linux 101 course and I hope to eventually work through all of Heath‘s content so I can do the PNPT certification. Plus I have a free PTS course (right before they offered it for free as an enticement for trying out INE.com) and an eJPT certification attempt from VetSec and the WAPT course and eWPT certification attempt (luckily this doesn’t expire). As long as Joe @C_3PJoe doesn’t come out with any more OSINT courses this year, I should not have any more distractions from what I already have on my plate. Narrator: @C_3PJoe did come out with more courses at the beginning of the year (The OSINTION), so Grumpy was in fact distracted again….

I had planned to get my OSCP by the end of the year, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, plus with their new pricing model I may wait until I can get an employer to pay for it. I have found new motivation during the new year and hope I can keep this motivation throughout the year and get my Red Team side more love. Meanwhile, I’ll still distract myself with TryHackMe’s various paths….

Hello World!

I’m GrumpyVaderCat or as many in the MMO world call me, Grumpy or Grumps.

The plan for this blog is to be able to give back to the community. I’d like to help others by sharing my experiences both good and bad as veteran transitioning to the field of Cybersecurity and as a member of the Cybersecurity community.

I’ve been in the Cybersecurity community for closing in on 3 years now. A little more than 2.5 years of that time has been doing incident response. It has been a trial by fire since Day 1 in the Incident Response (IR) world. I would not actually recommend doing IR as your first cybersecurity role. I’ve obviously done it, but there were LOTS of growing pains along the way. I went from having a very bad case of imposter syndrome and not having a lot of confidence in what I was doing to becoming one of the people who gets called regularly to squash a cyber incident and consult when there is a ticket that needs a deeper dive. One big thing that IR has taught me is there is sooooo much to learn in this field and so many different roles to fill.

Me at the beginning of my IR days

Like a lot of people, I was attracted to Cybersecurity because of the ethical hacking/penetration testing side of things. I have knowledge of a lot of the basics (and a certification), but I’m trying to go much deeper than just the basics. As of the writing of this post, I play around on TryHackMe and I have a number of certifications and courses in my learning queue (eLearnSecurity/INE‘s PTS and WAPT, the entire catalog of TCM Security Academy, a bunch of Udemy courses, and recently Blue Team Security‘s Blue Team Level 1 training/certification for work). In addition to all of that, I’d like to start a Master’s degree at some point in the next year. And if that wasn’t enough, I’ve found this fascination with OSINT and various OSINT courses (the OSINTion, OSINT Combine, and Michael Bazzell’s offerings ). This is all in addition to anything I want to do for entertainment. On top of that, I’d eventually like to get involved with some of the streaming communities.

I draw inspiration from fellow practioners like Heath Adams (@thecybermentor), Joe Helle AKA TheMayor (@joehelle), and many other of the Infosec Twitter Who’s Who. Heath and Joe are beasts when it comes to getting things done. I aspire for this blog to reach the epicness of DFIRDiva‘s blog (@dfirdiva).

Look for reviews and project updates in future as well as other content while I get started with this blog. Bear with me with grammar, formatting, and design issues while I fumble my way through blog entries. 🙂

@grumpyvadercat