01_Intro
Welcome
This blog will document my learning journey into offensive security. Expect walkthroughs, research notes, small projects, experiments, and general observations along the way. I don’t come from a traditional IT or programming background, and I’m not a writer by trade, so there will be rough edges, consider this space a living record of my learning process.
When people ask what this field feels like so far, my answer is usually that it’s overwhelming in the best possible way. I describe it to non-technical friends like this: wanting to become a brain surgeon, but first needing to study general science, then biology, then medical foundations, then surgery, and then the specialization. I have a weird balance of ADD and OCD that constantly leads me down rabbit holds and on tangents, that while constantly learning it can sometime delay the process.
Projects
I’m currently working on a few projects:
I’ve built and tested various wireless tools—Björn’s devices, Marauder variants, and others. Right now I’m working on updating a Pwnagotchi-style platform for the new ESP32-C5 boards. I’ve managed to bypass the ESP-IDF v6 restrictions to allow deauthentication, but I’m still refining the capture process for association frames. They’re visible on my test network, but not consistently captured yet. It’s been a great introduction to wireless protocols, firmware, debugging, and hardware quirks. I’m relying heavily on AI for the coding-specific pieces, but the learning value is huge. If you have experience with new ESP32-C5 boards, please feel free to reach out.
Another ongoing project is a custom “Hack-A-Long” AI system. It’s part neural network experiment, part personal learning companion, trained on offline and online models that grow as I do. Plenty of tools already exist, but I want one tightly aligned with my own learning path. Even if it’ development slows me down occasionally, it’s preparing me for an AI-integrated future while strengthening my manual workflow.
These projects also pushed me towards investigating the MCP protocol, since agentic AI continues to expand across platforms. I’m still early in that exploration, but lot’s of interesting finds there so far.
I’ve also been doing a lot of wardriving experimentation and building various collection devices. You can see some of my activity here:
Path so far
I started the year by completing the Akamai Network Engineering certificate, and recently passed CompTIA Security+. The Akamai certification isn’t a standard industry cornerstone, but after years of informal IT/networking work in studio environments, I wanted a structured benchmark of where my networking fundamentals stood.
Right now I’m pursuing the Hack The Box Certified Web Exploitation Specialist track. I won’t share paid HTB content here, but I’ll write about my general experience, workflow insights, and walkthroughs of non-restricted boxes. I’m also progressing through PortSwigger’s Web Security Academy labs alongside the HTB material to reinforce concepts. Balancing that with training my custom Hack-A-Long AI has slowed things a bit, but the deeper understanding has been worth it.