Study path

Hey, just trying to get some advice on where I should go from here in terms of studying. I'm currently wrapping up my OSCP and was thinking of taking the OSCE immediately after, and I'm already a professional programmer. The certs are nice, but I'm primarily interesting in the offsec courses for the knowledge gained. I don't really have any intention of working as a pentester or whatever, or would rather just discover and sell exploits as my primary income; I couldn't conscience working for a big corporation as a whitehat. I'm well employed at the moment so I can fund myself while I build up the skill needed. The primary question is, should I keep going through the offsec certs to get the knowledge I seek, or are there better options? I feel like the best scenario would be to have a mentor or group of mentors to work with, especially in real-life scenarios. Unfortunately, I feel like at my current skill level, I would be mostly dead weight (Since the OSCP is really just basic knowledge). I figured I might start to look for someone to mentor under after I finish the OSCE, but if anyone thinks I should just go ahead and try beforehand, I'm game to try that. Or if the mentoring/working with a hacking group thing seems entirely unrealistic, let me know. Appreciate any advice.

>>3370 I'm not in the sec field, but I can offer general advice. The best way to learn something is to gain experience in a practical situation, and being involved in a community of co-tradesmen. Are there any pentesting meetups/confrences in your area? Have you considered going to defcon, 3c, etc? Your mentorship idea is good, but I've found in my own experience that it's hard to find good mentors through a formal program, especially online. I've had more success from working alongside skilled people, whether that be in paid work or volunteer/hobby work. If you're not too morally squeamish, try to get involved in active blackhat scenes, especially imageboards/irc channels that do ongoing ops (lainchan discusses sec, but it doesn't practice sec; ay, there's the rub). Watching people do their thing in their "natural habitat" so to speak is very informative. Trying to make money from sec solely through selling exploits is a lofty goal, but with Lain, all things are possible. Godspeed.

The mentorship I had in mind was very much what you're suggesting, but being that I keep to myself mostly, I don't know where I would find any of those channels. I would prefer to find an active black/gray hat group to work with and learn from them. If you know of any places I can look that you feel okay talking about, I'd love to hear about them. Or we can email/irc and talk there. If not, I get it. Thanks for the advice. Nothing remotely like any of that in my area, hence being so used to working and learning alone.

>>3372 Like I said, I'm not in the sec scene, so I don't lurk in those kind of communities. If I WERE trying to get into them, I'd start with: - tech/chan communities, lainchan, 4chan and 8ch tech channels (see maybe rizon #/g/technology, #/g/sicp, #/g/tech) - altnet forums/channels: tor, i2p, and cjdns specifically (places in the deep web will have comparitavely less rules about adhereing to some government's laws, which leads to looser lips) and establish a reputation, wait for someone to talk about other, more obscure places from there. Remember, though, that trying to get into "real" hacker communities is very difficult, in a large part by necessity. This kind of thing can take weeks or months of continual effort, and might not lead anywhere even if you put your work in. Lurking is a difficult art.

>>3373 I've been lurking chans for a very long time but I haven't really tried lurking in their irc channels, and haven't really seen any darkweb forums. I'll look for some of those. Maybe see if partyvan is still around too. Thanks again!

>>3374 pasrtyvan as in partyvan.eu? that website is long gone IIRC! I think the IRC channel is still around...

>>3373 He's never going to find anyone in those communities. On 4chan, he's just going to find ricers. On tor/i2p, he's going to find paranoiacs. Just go head to /r/netsec on reddit and hang out in their IRC. You won't be finding any blackhats, but at least you'll have people to talk to. >>3372 99% of "black/gray" hat groups are full of idiots, and very few of the ones you'll find hanging out on an IRC actually engage in real exploit development. You're going to encounter packet kiddies, carders, and other random retards. >>3370 OSCP and OSCE are nice, but they won't help you build up the skillset to be an exploit dev. Go out and master some reverse engineering. Practice on malware.

>>3728 >>99% of "black/gray" hat groups are full of idiots, and very few of the ones you'll find hanging out on an IRC actually engage in real exploit development. You're going to encounter packet kiddies, carders, and other random retards. This is mstly true. So the question is, how do those of us that are interested and want to learn together and teach together find eachother?

>>3728 I 100% agree with this post. Hit every nail on the head I'm a pentester with my OSCE and that, to me, means "I just did a harder and lower level OSCP" Of course, without independent study, both certs mean nothing. The OSCE prepares you to BEGIN and BE COMFORTABLE WITH working with your own or reading someone else's shellcode/exploit. There's much, much more breadth to be covered.

>>3889 You do it in the clear on any of the major social media networks available to you.

>>3902 No, you find them when you try to get the TV to put on the Outer Limits.

>>3901 I did OSCE, it's kind of lame. Completed in like 4 hours. If you know assembly/hex editor soykaf it's a complete joke. -Egg hunter garbage no one fuarrrking uses anymore -No heap exploits. -Examples from the 90's. Not worth the ostentatious price. They should offer the cert they do at black hat remotely - that would be a much better deal.

>>3951 >Not worth the ostentatious price. They should offer the cert they do at black hat remotely - that would be a much better deal. Truer words have never been spoken The price was a racket. I feel like I paid to be able to take the OSEE at BH. I keep telling my friends that want to take it to just look up some good binary exploitation VM's like exploit-exercises and some 64b primer on vulnhub and you're better off to be honest. NOT worth the price now. Wait for AWE to go online.

>>3964 What's so sad about this is that from my perspective it is one of the best cert, as all other I have seen are just some variation of a quizz. And I understand that the technical level here is high here, but if you get the OSCE you are above 99% percent of IT "professional".

>>4027 The technical level here isn't high. We've got a bunch of threads including such gems as: "help my friend has been haxxed", "guise look at my unbeatable super secret code", and various other roleplaying events.

>>4028 and you notice, they're not especially taken seriously.

How can I learn about security and penetration? I basically have a major on my native language and also the Japanese language here in my non-anglophone country, so, yes, what I do has nothing to do with computers. Is there anything I could read that would guide me?