Preface

A couple of days ago, I released a project for loading PE files into memory and executing them (if you are interested, please click here). After that, I noticed that I now have more than 100 followers on GitHub (I hope the number won’t drop below 100!).

First, let me celebrate it. I am going to show you how to eat a cake with my face:

Waaaahhhhhhhhhhh!

Another cake.....ok, just kidding......

Then, I would like to say something beyond techniques and cybersecurity. Last December, I only had around 40 followers and about 200 stars on GitHub in total. Now, I have more than 100 followers and nearly 500 stars in total.

My Background

$ whoami
Currently an undergraduated college student in Taiwan, but studying as a foreign student.

Foreign student? But your speak Mandarin, don’t you?

Yes, I do. I am actually a native speaker, but my background is a little complicated. Anyway, offically I am still considered an international student.

Depression

Althought my major is electrical engineering, I have had terrible grades in university—too terrible to even admit it.

As a international student, I sometimes find it harder to handle exams compared to local students. Moreover, I couldn’t really fit myself in with others, and still I still can’t. Different cultures, speaking Mandarine with an accent, no friends, no associations, no family in this place.

Have you ever imagined someone speaking almost nothing for an entire week? Or even month?

Gradually, I started struggling with depression, and everything became worse. As mentioned in my About:

Unfortunately, I am currently struggling with mental issues and sometimes feel lost in an endless abyss, unable to find the right help even from professionals

During that period, I started coding and learning cybersecurity again after it aside for several years.

I don’t even know why I suddenly had the motivation again, but I knew one thing: If I did nothing, the ending would be worse—far worse than I could even imagine.

Learning Cybersecurity Again

I wasn’t easy. I still had to pass several difficult courses in my major. After I did it, it didn’t change anything immediately—the terrible GPA is still there, and it will remain on my record forever.

But…

What happened, has happened. We cannot change it.

I don’t even know who said this, but I believe it.

So, I tried to ignore it, even though it still bothers me late at night…

During the winter vacation, I spent more than a month reading books that I had never finished them (you can see many notes in my blog posts), learning programming, Active Directory penetration testing, Windows APIs programming, shellcode development, reverse engineering and malware analysis.

I also finished the second version of DuplexSpy, and released Eden-RAT, dotNetPELoader, OpenShell, IronPE and Elfina.

DuplexSpy is probably the most complicated project I have ever developed, it was exhausting to build everything by myself, but I have to say that I learned a lot from it—and truly enjoyed the process.

I also started a blog series called “Inside Different Generations of RATs“ to study malware.

Reading feedback and analysis reports from the internet is exactly why I developed these tools. Honestly, I have never coded this frequently before.

What Is Next?

Umm… good question.

I want to apply the graduated schools abroad, probably Europe or the United States. Therefore, I need to prepare for English proficiency tests and other requirements.

Objectively speaking, my situation is not ideal: a poor GPA, upcoming language tests, and other uncertainities.

Another challenge is that most professors at my university are not familiar with the kind of work I have been doing. They are experts in theory, but not ncessarily in practical cybersity. For example, when they think about cybersecurity, they often think of mathematical cryptography. However, I am more interested in topics like EternalBlue, malware, and Advanced Persistent Threats. That difference makes it difficult for them to fully understand what I have been working on.

As a result, it is hard for me to obtain recommendation letters for graduate school applications.

Recently, I have been trying to reach out to experts outside my university for advice and help.

About my future?

well… I don’t know.

Recently, “I don’t know” and “future” might be the words I hate the most.

But what else can I do?

Maybe the only thing I can do is to keep moving forward, even with these wounds.

THANKS FOR READING