20170809 Today's rant

So I was looking at old stuff, from somewhen around 2013-2015. 

This time around was kind of a life changing experience for me so to say.

Mid 2012, a Korean Drama called "Phantom" aired; it was about the cyber police and hackers.

That's when I was like "oh that's cool as heck!!"

(And at this time there were about 2500 more kids who felt the same way)

With a little search I was able to find a forum made for kids around my age to study hacking and stuff. It was rather full of scriptkiddies but little did I know about this world. Though, instead of getting into game hacks or little skills that'd break websites here and there (xss was a huge thing) I rather went into learning the C language. Of course my dream was to become the cyber police.

March 2013. I was still learning C. What a dumbass Well, I was kinda done with C, and I was tired of it. I never got into more than the basics, so I could solve Dovelet problems (like algorithm-related problems) but nothing like playing with APIs, graphics, etc. I started to look into CTFs. Miscellaneous problems were fun so I'd take a look at those and chat up with other people participating. I played a little with forensics and cryptography. I never got deep into those.

September 2013. I got accepted (more like invited) to team LeaveRet by a friend I've known since 2012. (He's still a close friend.) This is where I started learning the really basics of syshack(system hacking). You can see my studies in the category ~ 2015/Lord of the BOF. Learned a lot about system architecture, and those things that I can't remember one bit.

Overall I'm not really that logical and I don't math well either so I'm really unfit for these number stuff. I eventually gave up when I started to feel burned out trying to even understand Return-Oriented Programming. I literally spent months trying to understand the basics and failing to do so. Though, I wouldn't call those days wasted. It was a time I was passionate about something, and I really wanted to become a security enthusiast. Although I barely made any progress it was a good time.

By early 2015 I said goodbye to my teammates. I wasn't doing any progress nor helping them with anything on their competitions. Staying in the team seemed rather pointless and not beneficial to me either. I was losing too much time reading research papers I didn't understand, and I had to focus more on my schoolwork. I think this was a good time to quit the team though. Looking back, I was really, really afraid to leave since I was afraid I'd regret it later on. I don't regret it at all. I don't know how much longer I could've spent on trying to understand ROP, when I could be having more fun doing schoolwork and playing with friends.

Since then my dream has changed once again. Now I want to be a developer. I'm debating between a game graphic programmer (working with the graphics team to make sure all graphics function well and are programmed to do what they should) or a game server developer (or game developer is fine too). The former seems rather unlikely regarding my lack of art-related history but latter seems quite a tough goal for me to achieve. 

Hopefully I'll be able to fulfill my expectations. When I get the time (and maybe brain) to resume my studies on system security, I really want to try again too.