Table of contents
The Origin Story
The image you dream up in your head whenever you hear the word “Cyber” would undoubtedly be computers. Cybersecurity on the other hand could have you thinking about Hollywood hackers, which was exactly how I imagined it in my head.
The most interaction I had with computers while growing up was an IBM desktop computer, and all I did was play Spider Solitaire, Pinball and Pokémon Card games. Outside these, I never really considered a career with computers – I just thought they were cool toys that I could tweak their settings, hide files and create cool texts to show my friends.
I grew up watching a good amount of Hollywood action movies like most kids my age, and I particularly loved medieval war times, martial arts and guns – lots of guns. And all these preceded my early years before I became addicted to video gaming.
Again, I still never considered a career in tech or with computers, but I still played around with them at any chance I got. Eventually, I completed my high school education in 2014, and the years that followed laid the foundation for what would lead to my desire to get involved with tech.
Hero Discovery
At the time of completing high school, I was looking to go to college and study Pharmacy at any of the prestigious colleges in our country but I didn’t get much success getting into any. The admission process to colleges in my country only happens once a year, so after missing my slot in 2015, I thought to volunteer with a community education program to help high school students get ready for their next session in school.
Midway through the volunteer program, I made a few friends and we hung out for quite a bit. During one of my regular visits, I decided to scan through my friend’s PC in search of new gaming software and perhaps trending movies for entertainment during the weekends. And that’s how it happened – I found that one movie that would spark my interest in computers beyond being a regular user; Mr. Robot (starring Rami Malek).
Of course, I didn’t go off immediately on Mr. Robot with the desire of wanting to be a hacker of any sort, I simply enjoyed the drama. And by the moment I was done with the first season (before the release of the second season), I thought it’d be cool if I could try out a few tricks Elliot performed while at eCorp.
So I did what just about anyone would do (lucky I had an internet connection, after stealing the hotspot password from my dad’s mobile phone). I logged on to Google and typed what you’re guessing right now – “How to be a hacker”.
A handful of results turned up but none of them made any real sense to me at the time. So I did the next best thing that came to mind. I logged on to pdfDrive.com and a few other eBook resources and downloaded as many eBooks that turned up with the hacking keyword.
A few hours in and I felt I could become a prime grey-hat hacker (some fancy term I found in one of the first eBooks I got). However, I got stuck after reading the same similar lines in multiple books.
“Code. Learn to code. Understand code. Execute code. Code! Code!! Code!!!” What in heaven’s name is code anyways?
So I’d go back to my friend and he’d in turn introduce me to Freecodecamp.org which felt like a goldmine (and is still a goldmine). Except I got tired of digging and left it to keep up with studying pharmacy in college.
Nevertheless, after seven years of not being successful with the pursuit (by the fifth year, I had decided I wanted to play with computers and had actively tried to get into a computer science program) I settled to go to a state college that offered a Cybersecurity degree program and that pretty much started the journey for me.
As of the time of writing this article, I'm currently undergoing my Students' Industrial Work Experience Scheme as part of my coursework for my second year in college and I'm nowhere close to Elliot's skill level, but I understand it is a process - so here I am, documenting this process for you to follow along.
Being through two years of college study, my interests have grown to include the application of cybersecurity to systems including BlockChain and the Web3 version of the WorldWideWeb.
So let's see how this journey leads.