A Day in the Life of a Pentester/SL Cybercity Engineer

Morning Routine

• Start the day by brushing teeth and fixing hair.
• Work from home setup, minimal hair grooming with gel and water.

Setting Up the Work Space

• Tour of the home office.
• Turn on monitors in sequence (left to right or right to left).

Daily Work Routine

Initial Tasks

• Check emails for urgent alerts.
• Inform security team of any vulnerabilities or critical exploits.

Planning and Research

• Review scope of penetration tests.
• Test exploits in a lab environment before deploying on clients.
• Information gathering on targets like IP addresses, domain names using OSINT (Open Source Intelligence).

Tools Used

• Operating System: C Linux.
• Tools: Metasploit, Nmap, Burp Suite.
• Vulnerability Scanners: Nessus, Qualys, Rapid7.

Midday Activities

Conducting Penetration Tests

• External, internal, or web application engagements.
• Use of scanners and various tools depends on the test scope.

Lunch Break

• Enjoys the flexibility of working from home, can easily take a break for lunch.

Post-Lunch Activities

• Continue with exploitation and post-exploitation tasks.
• Focus on discovering sensitive data.
• Document findings and prepare penetration test reports.

Client Debrief

• Discuss findings and exploited vulnerabilities with clients.

Evening Routine

• Gym for decompression and personal time.
• Watch NHL or engage in self-development.
• Write-ups on CTFs and review daily work.
• Learn new techniques and tools in cybersecurity.

Security Measures

• Securely store collected data, ensuring encryption and protection.

Education and Career

Background

• College education and a Master’s degree.
• Certifications in cybersecurity.
• Transition from system/network admin and cloud engineer to security engineering and penetration testing.

Motivation

• Driven by the goal of protecting data and educating others.

Community Involvement

• Creation of YouTube content and teaching courses.
• Focus on inspiring the next generation of cybercity engineers.

Demonstration of Skills

• Showcased a network scan on a personal network using tools like Nmap and Responder.
• Demonstrated how to capture hashes, crack them, and authenticate to a system using Hashcat.

Conclusion

• Overview of day-to-day activities as a pentester.
• Encouragement to further explore IT training programs for a career in technology.