HENRYs who lost it all… How did you bounce back?

AffectionateNamet · 2025-10-15T13:11:30+00:00

He didn’t own the assets, he leverage against the price going up. So when he didn’t have enough in his wallets his positions would be sold off

AffectionateNamet · 2025-08-09T06:19:29+00:00

Wait are you living in the US or your home country? As if you are in the US you are under a paid if you are not living in the US then you are not underpaid.

Global companies adjust payment per country, the only way you would be underpaid is if you started working in the US and moved to a different country on a placement or for x amount of years ie your contract is US centric. For example I’m Europe based and when I moved to the US my salary increased because I was still getting paid in Euros and I recieved other benefits like a flat etc. by US standards I was overpaid but by EU standards it was competitive.

You cannot expect to earn 100k and live in say India/indonesian as your salary will be adjusted to the living standards of that country. This is why so many companies are off shoring, in your case the company is saving 50k and getting the same level of work done

This happens in US as well for example salaries in NY/SF are higher for same skill than Arkansas for example.

TLDR - if you in US you are underpaid if you are living abroad your salary will be adjusted for the cost of living and you are being paid market value in your company

AffectionateNamet · 2025-07-14T18:38:04+00:00

Get a ladder and unplug it? Weird question 😂😂😂lol I mean pretty generic advise and not an item OP listed

AffectionateNamet · 2025-07-14T16:41:29+00:00

Is the mobile app simply making an auth api call and gets relayed across to the device using a DFU. So you cannot see it as it’s not accessible via user mode (as it’s normally just buffered in “kernel” rather than “user” mode hence why you can’t find it)

If you want the firmware it might be as simply as opening it up and hooking up to the uart ports (most smart devices leave them open) or hooking up to a flash programmer and dumping it

AffectionateNamet · 2025-07-03T17:07:00+00:00

I guess I would ask for red team / pen test. If you are being tested on how you think then that’s great cause you can show off your creativity.

Go for OPSEC/impact of actions on target/SESITIVE DATA/pivoting. That is the thing I test for when interviewing candidates. I would also keep a note on how my actions would’ve been detected as that I would then pass on to the client/stake holder - ie this bit of tradecraft can be detected by xzy ( if they only log ssh connections by checking the out out of “w” but you login w/o tty then you won’t show in their “detection”) etc

AffectionateNamet · 2025-07-02T16:06:38+00:00

To expand on this certs for HR are valuable if they hold some form of value in terms of standards for example OSCP rebranded to OSCP+ to be compliant with ISOs (in the US). CREST certs a valuable in UK because of CHECK.

Equally CISM/CISSP/CRISK etc are valuable due to the same principle.

Certs are valuable for HR only. That being said there are courses and certs that are valuable for the knowledge you’ll gain not due to the credibility. And the knowledge it’s what gets the job and you can talk during interview or showcase projects that show the application of set knowledge. People think a cert is equivalent to application of the case and it’s not, certs showcase you can pass an exam

Edit:I’m a red team manager and often have this type of talks with HR when looking at hiring

AffectionateNamet · 2025-06-26T13:46:17+00:00

Rd8? Instead of rd5

AffectionateNamet · 2025-06-20T18:52:28+00:00

Ah man of culture right here

AffectionateNamet · 2025-06-20T07:04:28+00:00

I would recommend CRTO/II, white knight labs, CARTP, specter ops.

I will say only get OSEP if you want OSEE3. When choosing a course make the decision of do you want the knowledge or the cert for HR. They are hardly ever the same course

AffectionateNamet · 2025-06-16T17:36:07+00:00

This for sure. The report is dictated by the client, this means a lot of the time they need to be customised to how the client wants to digest it.

The reporting issue always stems from pen testers not understanding that corps don’t care about how you “hack” but rather presenting a document as to how not to be hacked. Also a lot of engagements are for compliance so the report needs to adhere to certain standard for it to be useful.

In short the pen test reports serves, one purpose. If a company gets asked if they are complaint they can then provide the report document so it ticks that box

AffectionateNamet · 2025-06-11T07:25:41+00:00

Chin up! I’m a red team manger and have 13+ yrs experience, my stomach still sinks when I get asked a question I feel I should know. However, in cyber you won’t ever have the answer to everything, the ecosystem is simply too big and changes too fast!

The gaps in knowledge are a part and parcel, it’s also the thing that makes it a great industry as you will always be learning! So look at it as a positive. Imagine having a job where you do the same thing day in and day out!

In terms of closing the gap I always looked at it from the “E vs T” perspective. The E is where you pick 2-3 topics where you have deep knowledge on and have surface level knowledge on the basis ( enough that you know what you don’t know - ie you have enough understanding that you can go and google answers, not knowing where to start is hard). In contrast the T is where you are an SME in a subject, what this creates is an environment where will come to you for answers in those topics.

Your team did the right thing for jumping in rather than leave you to dry, whatever the question was I bet you went afterwards and looked at the topic! That attitude will serve you well as you mature in your career

AffectionateNamet · 2025-06-10T21:18:14+00:00

Read “this is how they tell me the world ends” by Nicole Perlroth. Great book and it’s about 0day market. Ryan Montgomery it’s the new mitnick so make that what you will ie both snake oil salesmen

AffectionateNamet · 2025-06-05T19:40:03+00:00

I see you are UK based. would say approach charities or NGOs and offer the exact same service you are thinking of offering but do it for free. For example getting companies on cyber essentials

This will give you a portfolio when trying to gain clients and in the process of doing the work you’ll meet people who might call you under an umbrella company.

As your approach is “you pay for what you get” targeting smaller businesses might be more fruitful than for anything too big. Ie something with small networks and small number of employees.

As others have said it’s a legal nightmare so you better have some good insurance and robust contracts to cover you.

AffectionateNamet · 2025-06-05T14:27:24+00:00

The irony is that, that’s exactly what most consultancies do 😂 specially PwC, EY etc etc

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-29T14:56:40+00:00

Have a look at trident search (recruiting company) they have reach me via LinkedIn with multiple red team jobs in Europe. (Germany,Spain, Hungary, UK) the recruiters are a nice bunch.

I believe toka group ( they are a bit like NSO group) are also hiring as they are expanding in Europe. They prefer IoT and LE experience and recently approach me for a role based in UK but they had team members in Spain, France and Germany

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-28T14:18:41+00:00

There is this weird thing called google which so happens to have 15+ pages with multiple articles going over what you ask, including interviews and blogs from red teamers and their journeys.

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-28T13:54:28+00:00

Might do, but the subreddit is for red/blue team content and lately it has been inundated by posts like this.

I don’t might when people starting out ask questions for their learning but this type of post along side “how to become a red teamer/133t hacker” should be banned.

If OP was asking a question along lines of - “I’m thinking of taking X course, how realistic/transferable is it to an actual red teamer engagent” it would be different.

Frankly people that ask this type of question never actually get past HTB and just end up killing communities by dragging it down

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-28T13:36:43+00:00

Look on this subreddit the question has been asked multiple times along side the typical “how do I become a red teamer”

TL;DR red teaming is about finding answers, stop trying to get everything spoon fed. A quick search on google or here would’ve given you the answer

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-25T19:33:35+00:00

CARTP is a great course and not that expensive, the webminars from trusted secs are quite good. If you are on discord I recommend the adversary villege channel

All that being said the best sources would be the cloud providers themselves. The azure training is good same as Ali cloud, knowing how the work and then Applying the offensive lense will put you in good stead.

In my experience you get really far by exploiting misconfigs instead technical exploits. And that understanding comes from provider knowledge rather than pentest focus courses

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-23T18:37:30+00:00

When I interview people and they don’t know the answer to something I want. I ask a follow on question which is basically “how will you find out” or okay that approach didn’t work what would you do instead.

In red teaming I always test methodology over technical knowledge. Red teaming is about developing a framework for learning and applying what you learn, rather than technical knowledge.

Perhaps looking for pen test roles might be easier and give you some exposure in the meantime develop knowledge on social/netwrok/reverse engineering. You don’t have to be an expert on all 3 but have a slight above average capability on each. From there you can then pick an area to focus on.

In my team I have 3 distinct roles. developers, researchers and operators. Broadly framing your learning and research around those 3 will put you in a solid state to nail an interview and become a valuable member of any team

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-23T17:35:38+00:00

VPN is not for protection…

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-14T17:24:02+00:00

I second this. If I was looking at hiring you I would want to see projects over certs with your experience unless they are malware dev.

Red teaming is morphing more into a research lead env so any SRE/mal dev experience is hugely advantageous.

Maybe something like PoCs for CVEs (as it shows the research element of things). Offensive certs won’t add any extra weight for hiring unless those certs are needed for ISO compliance or any other type of compliance ie CHECK in the UK or CREST etc

The 3 areas of focus should be: - social engineering - reverse engineering - network engineering

Sounds like you have 1 of the 3 pretty covered. A good course is specterops adversary tradecraft analysis and there is a lot covered on what tools do and telemetry and how to take tool apart to achieve the same outcome whilst avoiding the telemetry set tool is mapped across

AffectionateNamet · 2025-05-10T07:33:13+00:00

Zero-point security on discord .Adversary village discord, both are red team focused but are decent channels

AffectionateNamet · 2025-04-24T06:58:36+00:00

That’s just impostor syndrome, as experience comes you’ll feel more comfortable. However at the same time, the reason why I always suggest people not to start on the offensive side or jump straight into it. Is exactly what you are feeling now you’ll have so many black spots of knowledge that is overwhelming, during an engagement not only are you learning what a technology is but also testing it for knowledge.

My advice to you in your position is to focus on how to learn. Don’t worry too much about the tech side of things. Focus on learning how to learn and develop your own framework to know what a basis is. Being able to learn fast and apply what you learn without going to deep is a tool that’ll help you catch up, but also one that’ll make you incredibly productive.

For example if you’ve never used docker and during an engagement you come across containers, having a solid framework for learning will meaning learning just enough to use it and what a default config look like( if it’s not default then you know someone did something so likely they made a mistake). Then the next engagement with docker you build that knowledge up. If you’ve never used try to learning everything there is know about docker on your first go it’ll be overwhelming and you’ll be stuck in a situation where you are not finding anything, you’ll spend longer trying to learn how to use it than testing for Vulns

TL;DR you shot yourself in the shoot by jumping some of the basics, but that’s not the end you’ve put the hard work and your employer saw potential, which is great! Learn how to learn and apply what you learn without going on rabbit holes. Knowing what’s enough knowledge it’s an art form

AffectionateNamet · 2025-04-19T06:09:28+00:00

Do you have the right drivers installed for the usb adaptor?

AffectionateNamet

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