Being a part of Joe McCray’s Security Rookies program has been a blessing and a curse.  The man will work you.  He will give you stuff to do that needed to be done yesterday and keep you pumping out material.  It’s all a trick though.  The entire time you feel like you’re slaving away editing or creating docs, VMs, networks, etc, you’re learning and progressing.  I’m a senior systems engineer by title.  I know systems, networks, how to build, how to fix.  I didn’t have any idea how to hack four months ago.  That’s changing now little by little and it’s due to this program.  It started with doing simple web based challenges on enigmagroup.org.  Then it was on to exploiting ready-made VMs such as Ultimate Lamp.  For me, the coolest thing I’ve gotten to do so far was going through and updating two Metasploit course documents.  First off I learned how to manipulate the framework and make it work for me.  Secondly, how cool is it to realize Chris Gates produced the document you’re editing?  I’m learning from the best trying to be the best.  It’s a lot of work but it’s definitely worth it.

And don’t worry the fun never stops.  When it comes to SQL injection there’s plenty of work to be done.  Updating all the screenshots for Joe’s SQL courses was brutal.  By the time I was all done and had everything up to Joe’s standards I actually felt like I was starting to understand how it worked.  Who knew there was so much power in just a little tick’.  You will learn in this program what you’ve been trying to learn on your own from scrapping IRC, googlefu, and staring at code.  You’ll also learn Joe will need something done on a Friday and it needs to be done that night.  If you can’t commit don’t sign up.  We work as hard as we play.