Getting Into Cyber 102

Getting Involved and Setting Goals

Who Am I?

Graduated from UMD in '19 with a BS in CS. Involved in CSEC and helped create challenges for UMDCTF-2018/19.

Now I have to be an adult and work our lives away, but still love CTFs and connecting with the community! (And we love our jobs! #cyberroolz)

Mike - WittsEnd2

Software Engineer - C, Python, & Web

Reverse Engineer

Graduate Student - M. Eng. Cyber Security

Hobbies: CTFs/Dev Projects, Entrepreneurship, Baseball, Music, Stocks

This Presentation is...

• Learning how to approach this semester with a plan.
• Taking advantage of the resources available this semester
• How to look to apply cyber skills in other places

• Learning the basics of cyber
  • Video - click here
  • Slides - click here

Itinerary

• Evaluating where you are now
• Goal Setting and Schedule Planning
• Ways to Get Involved in UMD/CSEC
• Questions

Where are you now?

Evaluate Where You are Now

• Evaluate your skills on a chart 
  • Recommend 0 (beginner) - 3 (expert)
  • CTF Challenge Categories are a good way to evaluate
• Circle/Mark the categories you want to focus on
• Write down why you want to focus on it 

Setting Goals For The Semester

You want to get better at cyber

• You might have some expertise
• You might have none 
• How do you take advantage of the semester?

Set Specific Goals

• Concentrate on what you want to improve on
• Measurable progress
• Can be broken down into further goals
• Follow a framework (like SMART) 

Set Specific Timeframes

• Can hold you accountable. 
• More likely to actually work on the goal
• Helps to determine if goal is reasonable, too ambitious
• Know your own limits
  • School
  • Personal life

Set Specific Timeframes

Tools I Use

• Google Calendar
• Trello
• Asana
• Github/GitLab project board for specific projects

Have Some Fun and Get Some Exercise!

Building Skills?

Find a Group of Freinds

• UMDCSEC is a great group of friends interested in Cyber
• Ask questions and share what you are doing
• Ask other friends not in the club if they want to join you with cyber-related projects/events

Participate in CTFs

• Focus on a category (or two) for the CTF. 
  • If you finish one category or get stuck, move on. 
• Focus on a category you are not familiar with 
• Watch YouTube Videos
  • John Hammond
  • LiveOverflow

More About CTFS

• Persistence is key to success
• Solutions are not going to be obvious
  • Learn to use Google
• Ask questions to organizers and friends
• Figure out how the challenges were developed 
• Read writeups (even during competition)

Apply Security to Projects

• Break software that you build
• Use your skills with CSEC
  • Website/Infrastructure
• Use hackathons as a way to build cybersecurity projects
  • Build a set of vulnerable code
  • Build tools to help you solve CTF challenges (or pen testing)

Generating Ideas for Projects

My Project Ideas

• Create a binary analysis framework that hooks into Binary Ninja
  • Research/For Fun
• YouTube/Blog related to Reverse Engineering and Binary Exploitation
  • Teach skills to others
• Create CTF Challenges

Participate in Other Clubs (including CSEC) 

• Diversify Interests - Be Curious
• NETWORKING
  • One of my closest professional relationships advised Startup Shell
• Apply Cyber Security skills to the other club