Getting into Cyber Security

Disclaimer

The things I did when I was young were not meant with the intent of harm. I had no knowledge of my actions back then. I had since stopped those actions.

For the international audience, I went through the Singapore education system. For context, secondary school in Singapore is about the same as 7th to 10th Grade, while Polytechnic is similar to 11th & 12th Grade in the US education system.

Baby Steps

Back when I was in lower secondary (7th to 8th Grade), there was this popular MMORPG called Maplestory. There were also private servers hosting variants of the game which I played on. I am never one that will commit hours to grind levels in a game, at most I will just casually play it. However, I do always wonder what if I own or have full access and control of the entire game server? I wanted to get the best in-game character and weapon in the Maplestory private server I was on. But I know that I will never commit the required amount of hours to achieve that. Instead, I decided to look into how I can set up my own Maplestory private server which I will have full control over.

It was the early 2000s, and I was barely 14 years old. With my limited ability in Googling, I scowled the net and was able to learn how to set up the server. The server had a MySQL database to store users account information and was also hosted on a private LAN via Hamachi, a VPN application. I managed to obtain the best weapon in the server I created but there wasn't anyone who wanted to play on it. Still, I had fun exploring the game and doing things that only someone with full game administrator rights can do before decommissioning the server. Overall, this was a net positive experience as I did learn how the game can be privately hosted.

Sinking Other Ships

With this new found knowledge of how the game works (to a certain extent), I tried to find ways to exploit other private servers. One of the exploits I found was through editing the game’s client-side files. This allowed me to deal more damage. This didn’t last long as the server detected the exploit and I was permanently banned from the server.

Turning Over a New Leaf, or Not

During upper secondary (9th to 10th Grade), I signed up for a Facebook account and started playing a couple of Facebook games. I began experimenting using CheatEngine on a couple of Facebook games. I managed to exploit the game where I changed my in-game currency amount to 999999. Back then I had no idea of the inner workings of why and how the exploit worked. I simply trusted my intuition of monitoring the hexadecimal values displayed in CheatEngine as I performed actions to get my currency to change (e.g. selling or buying an item in the shop). From there, I tracked down the browser memory address that contains the currency value and changed the value. Fortunately, game security wasn't as secure back then, and even a then teenager like me can perform these exploits without any formal tech education.

First Unofficial Tech Career

I am assuming that many readers are in tech. I am sure you can relate to this experience where you are automatically designated to be the IT Support in your home.

Throughout my early years, it became apparent that I was always drawn to the world of technology. I always find myself spending countless hours tinkering with various devices and software. Because of this, I was involuntarily designated as the IT support in my home. The job scope ranges from troubleshooting the Internet connection to fixing printer issues.

The highlight of my IT Support career was when I had to unbrick the PlayStation Portable (PSP). Truth be told, it was my greed in wanting to cheat in PSP games that caused the PSP to brick. I ended up bricking the device during my attempt to install custom firmware that enables you to run cheats in a game.

I had to scroll through countless forums' threads and tried all possible methods to unbrick the PSP. It took me about 6 months before unbricking the device. This experience taught me perseverance.

Another Interest

Throughout secondary school, I was also involved in another hobby which was video editing and filmmaking. I created digital visual effects (VFX) like gun muzzle flash, lightning effect, energy ball, and lightsabers using Adobe After Effects. I even ventured into producing sprite animations and a simple FPS Flash game with Macromedia. As I approached the end of secondary school, I had the choice to apply for a technology course or a media course at a polytechnic. For whatever unexplained reason, I chose to enroll in the media course.

Old Habits Die Hard

For one of the final projects in the course, students were allowed to do anything, hence I decided to do something technical. I developed a front-end website using vanilla HTML, CSS and JS in Notepad. Yes, I used Notepad and don’t be mistaken for Notepad++. I had no idea there was softwares like Notepad++. I guess some old habits die hard as I still find myself going back to tech.

Reality Sinking In

After graduating from polytechnic, I had to serve my compulsory military service for about 2 years. During my time in service, I got to know many people from many backgrounds. Conversations were usually about what one of us will be doing after service. Many of the people I talked to already had a place at a university. I tried to apply for university but was rejected due to my unsavory polytechnic GPA. More so, my polytechnic course in media design was totally unrelated to the degree programs (Business, IT) I was applying for. My service time was up and I didn’t manage to get any place at any local university.

Time to Face Reality

I managed to get a full time job as a 3D artist at a small media production company. I was tasked to handle technical tasks such as rigging 3D characters, VFX, and exploring technology such as facial motion capture. This rekindled my interest in tech as I got more curious in finding out how all this software works under the hood.

Shaping my Reality

I decided to pick up Python to improve my work and automate tasks more efficiently by creating scripts to automate certain processes. After a year working as a 3D artist, I made the decision to apply to a university again. By the stroke of luck, I got accepted to a Information Security degree program at a university which I was rejected twice from when I applied during my military service. For reference, this was late 2019 and the first term of university is at 2020.

Many of my future classmates will have prior formal polytechnic education in IT, and I know that I will be way behind in terms of technical experience and knowledge as compared to them. I wouldn’t want to be a burden to them during school assignments and projects due to my lack of competence. So I took the initiative to self learn cybersecurity, programming, and information technology related domain knowledge before the first school term commenced.

As I reflect on my journey, it is always interesting how my life trajectory has changed and somehow circle back to something I believe I was meant to do. But I guess only the future holds the final conclusion of what I am actually meant to do.