Introduction

Welcome to ByteWatch. I am Erik, aka Bytefl0w. Let's go through some introductions. I am a Penetration Tester that comes from a Software Development background. This newsletter to share my progress learning and sharpening my craft in cybersecurity. My hope is that this helps others on the same path I am sharing tips, tricks, resources and my thoughts throughout each week. Let's get into it!

Time Spent/Challenges

I time track all of my learning currently using a open source tool called, traggo. For me this does the job of seeing how much I am committing to a specific task. This helps gamify the process of stuff more and helps create good study habits from what I have found so far!

Currently I just mainly use it to track my OSCP/CTPS studying and practice, but I will start to use it more for bug bounty, tool creation, and more. I will dive into the tool more in blog posts and twitter, but just want to give some background. Stay tuned!

Here are my stats for the week:

Weekly Ideas/Thoughts

Focus is the new Currency - I just finished listening to The Art of Focus by Dan Koe via audiobook this week. He talks about how peoples focus are manipulated, how we are being spoon feed cheap, destructive dopamine sources, that we all live the same default path as everyone else, follow the same ideas, beliefs and routes. But if we "narrow" our focus we can achieve the better life we are all after. This isn't a "self-help" book, but more of a wake up all to what lives we are all living. There are a ton of ideas in this book I want to explore more in my blog and implement some of the ideas in my day-to-day. 10/10 definitely recommend.

HTB Academy content is 🔥 - This is where it is at. I've completed 6 modules so far on the platform and have lots more to go, but wow. If you are looking to become a penetration tester or red teamer, I would fully recommend purchasing some modules and giving it a shot. As you can see I am It's cheaper than OSCP material and SO much better. My hope is that this will over prepare my for the OSCP, along with getting ready for the CTPS cert. DM me if you have questions.

Developing Caido plugins could be huge - During the latest Critical Thinking Bug Bounty Podcast, Joel and Justin talk about how they are starting to use Caido almost exclusively in there bug bounty workflowThere are always be unique opportunities to dive in and be the first one into something. This will help make a name for yourself within the industry and establish reputation. Specifically, I am talking about Caido, the Burp Suite replacement written completely in Rust. Soon the development team will implement a plug-in feature, allowing developers to create plug-ins for Caido. My plan is to jump on this bandwagon and reimplement popular Burp plugins for Caido and develop ones for the community. If you are a developer that is looking for a way to make it in this industry, I feel like this would be a great opportunity.

Also, if you haven't listened to the Critical Thinking Bug Bounty podcast yet, you are missing out. One of the best technical cybersecurity podcasts out right now. See the link in the resources to start listening!

Resources

- The Art of Focus Audiobook

- HTB Academy Website

- Critical Thinking Bug Bounty Podcast link

Have a great week!

— Erik / bytefl0w