10 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 30 Sep \ parent \ on: How to crack encrypted SSH keys with John the Ripper security
I would love to recommend you a cert but I really have no idea, I never did one (but I might at some point).
Most of my knowledge is from labs in university. I switched university after my Bachelor's degree because I was also disappointed in what they had to offer. They didn't even offer general computer science courses about compilers for example.
This might have been one of my best choices in life because the new university had so much more interesting courses available (which is why I picked it). They even had cybersecurity labs! I took the following three:
  1. Application security (reverse engineering, buffer overflows, ROP, use-after-free etc.)
  2. Cryptanalysis (linear cryptanalysis, side-channel attacks etc.)
  3. Penetration testing (gobuster, LinPEAS, metasploit, SQLi, JtR etc.)
I also played some CTFs with the university team which was fun but I wasn't really good since the challenges get really difficult really fast and I wasn't consistent in my practice. I already struggled with the challenges that were supposed to be easy during live CTFs but it also depends a lot on the CTF.
I can recommend playing CTFs though if you haven't already. Examples:
Is your university/college known for computer science and ideally even cybersecurity? If not, it might be wise to look for another one if you can. Not sure where you're from, but here in Europe it's mostly just a matter of applying successfully and being willing to move there since studying is mostly free here. I wish I made more use of that but I didn't really appreciate studying during my time, especially at the end. I dropped out before I finished my Master's degree (I was nowhere near finishing after 2 years) because I was offered to join SN.
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111 sats \ 0 replies \ @2a3dex5 30 Sep
Thank you for your answer, it does provide some important points as to where to get hands on skills.
Sadly I'm studying in Canada as an international student, picked a college because of the "practical" labs, which nothing has been further from the truth. I have spent over 30k in this fucking scam of a college for things that are half ass explained and where I shit you not, a teacher literally give as YouTube videos instead of explaining.
I could have gotten a SANS certification for 9k instead of blowing my savings. Ohhh well.
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