Hacking Minds with Ansh Bhawanani | Bitten Tech x BSides Noida | S1E8 @BittenTech

guys we're just going to wait for 5 to 10 seconds maybe just to make sure that everything is going smoothly we got a very big episode today and a very exciting guest so we want to make sure that nothing goes wrong and yeah just give us 5 to 10 seconds or probably 20 and we'll start with the

board all right perfect hello and welcome everyone uh to to the official YouTube channel of besides Noida a goto show for insights and conversations with leading Minds in technology and cyber security I'm your host Karthik WMA from besides NOA and we have a very special guest joining us today um our guest today he's a Trailblazer in the world of cyber security with expertise in application security red teaming VAP and vulnerability management um we have an bhani currently he's serving as a product security Analyst at hacker one he's just not securing security systems but also inspiring thousands through his YouTube channel I'm sure you guys know about it uh he has over 350,000 subscribers so please join me in

welcoming the one and the only Mr anch so how are you and how is your weekend going like great hello everyone great to be here um so weekend for me it's great I mean at this point I was so excited to be here I I got to know last week so I was just waiting I was just waiting for this moment so it's exciting it's really fascinating for me to be Community uh driven like events like this I'm always ready for those things and uh the podcast it's really very informative for me as well I keep watching podcast myself so I'm being a part of this I feel I'm hopeful that I can deliver some

great quality verbal knowledge that people can help to grow themselves with so um great to be here and always I I I was there at besides I was there at one of the conferences that we had so um one of those things and I I'm very excited to like talk about those things that I do in my personal life in my professional life YouTube my job my uh my passion like I do train people I I train them uh I teach what I learn through this community through my last seven to eight years of experience in this field so uh I also want to mention that the work that you guys do I've always wanted to be a part of something

that has a greater cause to deliver back to the people so I have learned a lot from the community when I like I've watched many YouTube channels I've watched many courses free or paid whatever it really helped me like grow in this field job I've done certifications I've done many things but yeah uh like causes like this I've always wanted to B part with null besides oasp so really uh really glad that I met you guys really glad that we have something here um so you're doing a great job uh keep doing it all the best for the future and let's get started I'm so excited thank you so much in fact because but we'll get back to that

question about Community for sure uh initially so first of all it is our pleasure I'll be very honest for major majority I'm sure for all of us a majority of us are familiar with you and and your work and videos like your contribution to the community we really appreciate it and let's start with the first question that I really enjoy asking Our Guest about is basically your why right how and why this why cyber security so I would love if you basically have any incident that maybe got you into this field and cyber SEC out of all those beautiful options out there I think I've uh explained that in one of my videos like that video came out and that is uh

like interestingly my most watched video of all time on YouTube I think 1.4 million or 5 million if I'm not mistaken yeah yeah yeah I didn't expect that like uh I've seen this trend whenever I expect something from this video like I made this video This should hit at least some amount of views and those videos never hit those views yeah like they just 10% of it but when I posted this video I didn't have any expectation I just went through and posted it and then suddenly after a month it had almost 500k 400 K views and it just got viral so people commented there and I mentioned many names that I learned from and those those people got more

subscribers because of me wow so that was really fascinating and uh to talk about like how I started so basically it was a childish nature like I started with with a computer that I had so a computer

games real world they're really immersive we are just exploring like I am the one who is playing the game I in the game like GTA y City San Andreas all those games

connection

additional

extraordinary you have police Pursuits you have to evade

them how hard it is for you to escape a Pursuit so heat level six maximum last mission and then when you escape it the game is over all right so he he explained or he quoted that I go up to to level 10 I go up to level 9 or 10 normally

it's my secret Source if you can do it you do it otherwise it's it's fine I won't tell you that so

how to reach heat level n or 10 in this game to you have to do something

very update I didn't know like what's happening

download

downlo but it didn't work and then

but still I kept

trying I achieved that like level seven clockwise

but at least can do that I'm wor

it so it started from cracking and then I went I searched for more things like game Most Wanted is one of the game I played GTA City I played San Andreas cheat those are like normal

like we had HTML that were taught to us HTML

St

11 I took ma took maths so maths CS

facebook

facebook facebook facebook. username

password exct

password Facebook password has been changed your Gmail password has been changed Facebook password password [Music]

US gameing fishing

of Temple Runs ofans

ker and

then this is how I started cracking

and it can take over the world so 11 but up till 12 this was my encounter I came to know about metlo I came to know about K Linux so I came to know hacking so inst and then so internet better so it was easier for me to explore more

stuff and

then at this point I was just playful I was just exploring

it was just a hobby at this point

so a playful hacking it's just a satisfy your own desires while hacking it's not just

like and then then history ethical hacking

but

yeah this is how my first encounter with hacking was uh this was how and if you talk about why then I always felt ke this is what I want to do like even if it it's not like but

like challenging the law type of thing those things really fascinate me so bugs vulnerabilities issues I was always ready I was always like digitally always like reality in people in the stuff that we use in Daily work so how they work like how stuff works how then how can they work if we ify something how to challenge them so this type of things ethical hacking May sofware development they love to create assets but I don't really enjoy that I have done that a lot but I really enjoy I decompile that analyze that how is how is stuff working and then challenge the way it works that's that's how my Moto was that's great actually you know it is a very interesting answer

because so you were just curious when you were a child and that healthy actually to Pro that Healy comp intrigued you more and that's actually very fascinating majority of the people whom I know as well Jo is field whom I look up to they also started with you know gaming they also wanted to crack all the games and that's how this started and it's actually very cool you also spoke about Afters YouTube

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like YouTube CH actually uh very interesting ke 10 serious studied a lot but still I focused there I was only invested into board exams so C 9. and then 12th and then 12th boards are more more important so I knew that because physics chemistry ke math ke so I had three different coachings serious but then

again it's my dopam so I kept doing that I kept researching about stuff or games sof

like

windows

why not share that to people fascinating I'll be famous like

like that kind of

stuff it will become viral and I'll be famous YouTube channel could be the worst that it can be

screen recorder download or simple basic inbuilt video Windows Media Player how to take a screenshot on Windows

okay how toiles Imes

it was the best I can make so

this description

board exams like exams tension pressure responsibility just because of my it was like a new thing for

meams last

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this is how I started

examinating so

normally I went onto this thing which is more new more unique like it is not on the standard path hacking was not on the standard path was time per hacking was a very nich

topic Dev but hacking is something that

that's how it went that's great that's great although by the way for our viewers I'm pretty sure sir is not

recomending and yeah so so moving on um another last question about YouTube which I feel other people will be able to relate as well it's like you're currently working as a like a product security analyst right I'm sure you're very busy your weekday you obviously you are working at hacker one you are you're working as a full-time but still you able to take out time for YouTube I'm pretty sure for other people out there passion YouTube you know rning Series right friendship relationship so according to you how can you please tell us and share with us how are you able to manage your career and your YouTube channel and maybe you know that could help others as well managing their

passion and their professional life as well if you see my um YouTube activity from the last few months question I'm not exactly able to manage those things right now videos and it was really evident so I had more work CH in ail this year so responsibili so that's why it's difficult now to manage those things but I still manage to make sure I still have some other responsibility other than this work I have my YouTube channel U many like hundreds if not thousands people they look forward to it they look forward to the videos so that's why I make sure at least once per week2 2021 to 2024 it was my first job three years and then I switched it so

so I used to make one video per month misconception I would be viral in just two or three videos so then when I got to know the reality the hard way I started posting more I started more

frequent I had more topics to talk about I read books I read

articles so then

teaching people make better quality content even better than the one that I currently

make nothing less nothing more um so one week and then next week and then this uh to I used to shoot myself SC I make the script I research about it and then I started shooting set room set I started shooting I shot and then final raw product I used to edit

myself you should have a seamless experience yeah uh there should be no hiccups like cuts that should be proper or so I used to include that that's nothing major nothing fancy like Motion Graphics and all those things I didn't use that so I'm able to do that description almost two days Days

of course yes so but if you talk about now when I started working so it's very easy if you work from home I can say that you have the same setup you you can in between also work on those things

but in my first job work from home so I made a lot of videos but then they started calling me back into office and then it

started all right

so yeah

I outsourced my content editing it's still more compared to the Views that I get but it's still I want to not compromise with the quality I like problem I always find perfection even if I don't get it anywhere but I always start to do that so editing think so still to job and I still get very less time to do those things and it's not just about job it's not just about fulltime responsibility if you like once you keep growing now at certain age like my age is that time where I started taking more responsibility about my home as well yeah so it's age me it's very difficult to manage all the things like your

personal life as well your professional and your passion professional person for many people uh it's the only two thing that they manage yeah their work and their personal life for me it's additional that I work on YouTube it's not my job yeah I do it as my passion fulltime work it's part time U so it's additional for me so it's very difficult to think about that but one more um one more factor is there YouTube won't really appreciate that YouTube won't really promote that that's one thing and the second thing is I also post technical videos I also post CDF videos but the amount of views or audience or attention that I get on those videos are way less than the

normal ones way less than the face cam videos or just general videos basically YouTube also recommends that those type of videos so that's the thing I occasionally post that video uh but still sometimes I

that's why but still the simple F that I follow is at least have this amount of time for each of your [Music]

thing SCP I shoot that on weekends Saturday go time

I'll just give it to the I don't have any headache for that but so and that's the only thing if you are like

you're not getting what you put into like time so you'll quit that but for me it's a it's more of a responsibility and it's more of a passion that I follow I I want to address people and there is one more thing uh which many people might not know is that from the starting when I was born I was born with a stammer like

he will improve l l sentences he will improve when he grow up when he grows up my b

so that's one of the reasons uh why I started this posting on public platform be it YouTube or anywhere else so platform and then throughout those years like I'm continuously speaking every week I attend conferences I speak at conferences I speak at universities I speak on those podcasts so s one of those factors try to improve my own delivery my public speaking my Stam problem and it has improved a lot since since the past few years so it's it's really great toh to do that and it also keeps me it also drives me to keep doing this thing apart from my passion so I always think about it I'm doing my work I'm doing my personal personal stuff

it's always on my mind I have to make video I have to give value to people so that's how it goes that's great in fact said that how you you basically have to prioritize things in your life as you said your work your full-time is on your top priority as of now you said apart from that whatever time you are left with then you prioritize those things accordingly and that's great also the thing that I really uh like what you said about is how you basically the problem that you had of stammer you actually faced it head on right instead of shying away you decided to take the most difficult thing which is probably YouTube public speaking right that

obviously I'm assuming nightm but you decided I have to if you want to overcome and I'm I mean if I'm sure like no would be nobody would have noticed and that's actually a very good point and thank you so much for sharing that actually if you see my old videos right um starting so it had 2x or 3x more Cuts than I have today soine I used to fumble and I used to recall what what should I say and how should I say it so it was it was very difficult in the start time to just make five minutes of video I used to take two hours of shooting so it was very difficult for now the

problem has gone it was not completely gone but it's still there I have improved a lot but still the problem now is I used to try to perfect everything I try to speak in a certain way speak certain words in certain Expressions my gestures postures everything so now it's a Perfection problem before it was bare minimum now it's just improvement over Improvement yeah I understand and as you say like that's I think a problem with majority of the people including me I just tell myself you know Perfection is a myth nobody's perfect you have to just deliver just keep on doing and stay consistent that's great uh the moving on to the next thing so um

you're currently working as a product security analyst first of all I would really appreciate if you could tell our viewers about your day-to-day life up product as a product security analyst what do you do how does your normal day look like and you started your career as you said uh you are more inclined towards offensive side right red teaming application security so what role does that have in product security analyst so um at hacker one uh so many of us might know that it's a bug Bounty platform majority uh like as beginners as the viewers of this video this podcast it's mostly for beginners it's bug Bounty platform it's a way to connect to organizations and to report bucks and

get rewarded accordingly so internally how it happens is uh I would say this term like product security is a kind of misnomer like you can say hacka one is a product based company uh it's a hybrid it's Service Plus product so the core product here is the avability disclosure platform that they have uh like the platform that we have hack.com that's their core product so it has the whole workflow it has it has very complex framework at the back end so it's tailored for all type of researchers all type of text taxs or type of programs customers basically our customers are the organizations uh th those who have the digital footprint those who have the

assets online uh those where we work online on uh we create accounts we uh we consume content from them okay so those are our customers like um if you talk about famous customers Facebook meta Twitter Amazon those are the customers and there are many more yeah so the product is to connect the researchers from around the world who want to contribute to the security of those organizations and we provide a platform for them to connect and to communicate and to like ultimately improve cyber security of those organizations and improve the cyers space basically so those are the ones dominating the cyber space dominating the assets on on the internet so they put their assets uh

they put that they come into an agreement that researchers and they can hunt on this they can test on this assets this scope this domains what whatever it can be it not necessarily be any website it can be an Android app it can be uh uh desktop client it can be uh any web3 client as well we we are also hunting on uh llms we are also hunting on web3 we're also hunting on crypto uh platforms so there are all kinds of platforms like this Android iOS so they have all their assets listed they create a policy that this is the thing that you should follow create an account like this will provide credentials if Fe won

and then you should not hunt in this way you should only hunt in this way they have specific policies for that and then they also mention type bug valid bug invalid so these are all mentioned in the product that they have the researchers will hunt but they will report on the product and that report will go all the way through a life cycle the first report state is New State uh they'll report it and it comes to the hacker one staff it comes to the organization inbox uh because they are onboarded onto a platform so it will come to the new state and then they'll verify the bug they'll reproduce it um it's valid or not reproduce and then if

they feel that it has an impact if they have any risk involved this bug has it so they'll triage it like they'll address that this is an issue in their platform and they'll they'll try to fix it this is called triage so after triage it also comes ke after how many hours or days or months they are actually fixing it um and then there's there's also a retesting phase where we can ask the researchers if a fix is applied they can retest it and then after we'll close it as result so this is the whole life cycle of that bug so we provide this viability management thing to the organizations they can easily track uh

um they can easily track the bugs that they get and if it fixed or not how many assets are vulnerable what the most vulnerable asset what's the most uh popular bug that they have in their asset so the statistics as well yeah and uh our job specifically as a product security analyst is we uh also provide certain licenses to those organizations we have only one kind of license organizations come and they are responsible for the bugs that they get we mediate we help them to triage it we uh we have different licenses like Pro license Enterprise license for them to we decide the SLA for each type of bug bug has its own severity so we decide time a critical

bug should get Reed critical bug should get addressed it can be one day it can be two day so based on the license that we have we dedicate more time to them um so critical one day and then medium months so this is the license that we have so what we do is based on the license we provide services to them uh researchers bu submit we are the ones first line we are the first line of filter so we receive the bug and we are responsible to validate them before the organization does so a bug cannot be always valid informative so we will not accept this one because it's already tracked so to close the invalid bugs or informative

bugs those will be closed by us all right and then such that the organization's task is reduced their business is something else their Core Business is not security yeah we are the ones helping them with they need security because uh they are working online yeah so their Core Business might be e-commerce or medical or insurance or anything like that but for us it's important that they should focus on them and then only if the bug is valid only if uh the risk is in malled we'll forward it to them and then they'll work on just fixing it so um yeah and that's how we work so our daily job is to receive the bugs and validate them

reproduce the findings uh if it if it's reproducible then it's fine we'll go on and triage it we prepare the summaries so every bug has a summary so researchers

proper steps proper video screenshot end points so we ask them we properly draft a summary details so that the customer is able to reproduce it on internal side for the dev team or the security team so we prepare the summaries and we PR quality summaries and then info researchers say so we ask them and then uh we forward it to the theme so as uh we have a pool of reports we receive every day so we have a quota to complete every day uh as part of a performance review and uh like recently we know hacka one is one of the biggest Platforms in bug Bounty so reports and internally we have so many people doing

this and still we have openings for that they're expanding their team in India we have many openings for that and uh yeah people can apply so if they feel that they are good at bug Bounty they have done bug Bounty before and they understand reports then they can definitely apply so this is our daily work we are not exactly inside office like we don't have any engagements we what we do is we validate the books we know like how bugs Works how risk works not every bug is a risk and not every impact is a risk so we assess the risk and then decide if it's valid or not it's according to the customer only so

that's our daily job uh we validate BS and we uh we try to mediate we try to optimize the uh you can say what we can say that as ass management and also the attack surface for the customers all right I think your experience and your curiosity in uh red teaming application security gives you the skills that allows you to basically validate the findings that security research was basically fine and that's actually very interesting like truly properly hacker one you know exactly what goes around over there also I actually uh one thing is uh three years back when I joined my first company they had hack one program my company previously they have their they

have many assets they have wild card footprint so they have many assets and I was the one working on their hacker one side like I worked as a customer at that point and uh I used to triage I used to validate reports and see the responsibilities and risk from customer side and then when I applied at hacker one they also knew that uh ice is one of the customer of hacker one so they knew I come from eyes and um I can be a I can be one of the candidates that can help provide feedback as a customer like how can they improve their services as a customer yeah so that's how helped me a

lot in understanding because I was already familiar with the hack on platform I was already there key how does this life cycle works and how to do certain stuff on this platform on the core product so that also helped me um very very big so for this yeah I'm sure I'm sure also uh the other thing I think you know bug Bounty May what I according to my experience what a lot of people the mistake that they make is they often confuse pen testing VAP with bug Bounty for example in VAP if you are able to find a default Apache web page like for example on a port so in VA in case of VAP that is a finding although it is

informational you just have to say okay you know it is poor hygiene this is not how you should go about it but if you if somebody finds the same page on a bug Bounty platform they'll feel oh I found a make vulnerability and what people I think they don't realize is because you know if it is not if you cannot exploit it then you know it's not a valid bug and I think that is why a lot of people maybe you know they get demoralized because they're not able to find a lot of bugs and that's exactly perfect segue to my next question according to you bug Bounty a lot of people these days prefer

you know working as a full-time freelancer as compared to having a proper full-time job like you they feel that last week we had a uh like full-time bug Bounty Hunter now of course he's pretty good at it and uh he was and is still able to find a lot of bugs I think he have found more than 500 bugs but do you have any advice for newcomers out there because you know usually when they go on LinkedIn Twitter guys are just found a $10,000 bug you know bount and it often get demoralized people beginners when because and when I report it I'm not able to get any Bounty so is am I good enough maybe should I switch the field

so what do you think about that yeah that's so good actually people uh we don't tell uh our names because they will see that if they're working on the hacker one platform they'll know that who are who so I also one of them who closes the report so I would have some advises like I would reveal who am I of course but uh I would have some like if you see it closely I'm working as a PR analyst or as a product security analyst now but I worked as a customer back then so so they had their own dedicated in inh house security team they had their own absc team MH as a product based

company their Core Business was something else but they had their own security team they have the whole department infos Department red teamers appc GRC um automation incident response and everything so they were very well matured so if you go to some product based companies it's always the same case like they have very mature security program and they make sure that whatever the software they build they are very scrutinized they are very um manageable in terms of of security testing yeah so what we had was uh as an appsc if you know what appsc is like so we have Security in all the phases of sdlc right from the design phase right from implementation we have the whole life

cycle so if you talk about pentesting and VAP it's done internally in the company it's done before the actual software or the asset is in the production has go has gone into production or staging or anything else so we do in the testing phase so software public people don't use that it's not even released so pen testing is done before that before the actual product comes and even before that we have secure coding we have source code analysis we have implementation phase in software development testing and then even before that we have design phase secure design secure architecture that's also one of those phases so we start right from the start even before you think that you're making something think

how it can be made securely how the design can look securely so we have this OAS in OAS top 10 we also have this design phase also so if you think about this V they already tested the app a lot they already scrutinize the appow hanging fruits they already tested that jacking here yeah those open ports and they're already tested or already known internally so bug Bounty is only done when the product is released so bug Bounty is the last phase of any security program so people just make sure like if you have a responsible program you'll make sure that you follow the shift left approach SDC you properly follow security because if you go on the right

side you keep going on the right side you reach the final production Stage production stage that's the costliest to fix because you have to write right from the start you have to start all over again mhm change the design change the coding change the testing and then uh release it once again so it involves a lot of teams a lot of slas and lot of bandwidth for everyone yeah that's why if you are looking at to bug Bounty you'll have to make sure that whatever is not found internally you have to found those you have to find some actually risk riskful bugs so polies in many programs we have a default policy yeah bugs by default we

won't accept it many people don't read the policy I first recommend the bare minimum is to read the policy what bug is accepted and try to infer from them the exact wording might not be the same s programs if they mention that mitm is not allowed or physical access is not allowed it means that if you are reporting session inv validation it won't be accepted because to get the cookies you have to be at the user's desktop so it won't be accepted it requires physical access so you have to infer from them is C follow and also basic email enumeration username enumeration clickjacking or there is one more category hyperlink injection so we have HTML injection

that's like mostly valid but for hyperlink injection they say ke uh I'm inviting someone to my organization in an application I'm inviting someone and they will get an email so I have the opportunity to write a custom message in the email so I'll put a link in the email like a.com and I'll send it to them and if the link gets triggered like the link is highlighted a.com is highlighted in the email then it's a bug so actually it's something that's something that's uh that's not accepted because bug it's not company owned email client based how email clients process that content be it anything like Facebook Twitter it will be the same thing okay it's how the

email client gets formatted format link they get highlighted any link you put it so it's not the company's responsibility so why will they fix it they cannot fix something that they don't own yeah that's why it's not accepted and there are other basses as well like clickjacking and it's also one more thing emails perame like SPF records we have an argument it's mostly social engineering yeah it doesn't matter like it doesn't make sense to have a bug Bounty program to report social enging issues like for xss we know that it's a technical issue like issue we can filter that so that falls in the company's responsibility but for email spoofing email spoofing is something totally it's social

engineering like we have a login form uh it can happen outside as well Twitter L outside so that's also an issue it it's not very different here so that kind of bugs which are heavily relied on social engineering are not accepted so make sure that you first ask yourself ke what is the risk to the company if I say the impact like uh files that had credit card details uh you have found sensitive file in web archive or any uh any page belongs to this company and you and you reported so the risk might not always be assessed in in the front uh at the first place and we don't blame the researchers for that

sometimes company come and they say that this is dummy data this is not something actual it's not production data it doesn't belong to anyone so those books will be closed but for some cases if you can think risk um it can actually impact the company and their Core Business their Core Business how they work um uh it's a social media platform if you can uh put blacklisted content there if you can cause uh scripting or injection or Access Control issues those are the most common Access Control issues business logic issues and Idols those are the most common that we receive so it's not like access open we still get a lot of them we get subdomain takeovers and it's very

valid yeah so try to focus on those issues uh where you feel that reputational and financial damage can happen so that is one more filter so always always keep in mind the risk involved and always they just keep try to explain ke uh we have rate limiting issues we can invite n number of people n number of times it's not a vulnerability it's a nuisance like you are just bombing anyone's inbox and it doesn't have any any impact there so it may end up in spam as well yeah don't report those kind of issues if you have rate limiting and login form or any authenticated form where you can reset the password of someone like OTP Bypass or something

that is valid but yeah U those are very much described in the out of out of policy out of school policy section of that policy page and we also have hacker and platform standards like for each class of bug we have like what severity will we give it to them and eventually it will change because we are we are not the ones who decide the risk it's the customer so even if the impact is high they will eventually change it they can uh based on their risk involed so they are the most contextual about their product so they are the ones doing that so always make sure that it's not saturated yeah report we we accept

reports basic web cach poisoning request smuggling open rir xss HTML injection idor access control um and sensitive information disclosure like web archives so those are the bugs which which which we get many uh many times and predominantly so focus on this and just make sure that you feel it's something impactful all right so read the scope and impact impact impact impact in case of bug bony that's it and also like the examples that gave uh I think that really helped our viewers take idea and usually what you expect from a good report and I think maybe so you can also make um I'm not sure if you have a video on this uh the difference you know

in bug Bounty and how can a person make a good valid report I think maybe you can get an idea over there and yeah I would I mean I think it would help a lot of people yeah so so moving to the next section of the podcast yeah like questions and it's going to be the most cliche ones every week we roll out forms Google forms right and we are like U okay what are questions you want us to ask our guest so these are the uh questions and we'll take them like rapid fire okay because I think we short on time as well so we'll try to go like rapid fire and you can maybe just give

us a few insights right so a lot of people ask about opportunities so I'm a beginner I don't have any experience I want to gain experience so I have to get a job but job have want my experience but experience I need to have a job so this is this cycle right so in that particular case what do you recommend to freshers out there uh compromise that's the first thing that I'll recommend um many freshers have this whole threshold of expectations ke if I want a job and I'll get a job in a particular domain only and need to go into this domain I'll get a job there so they try to find openings they also apply there but openings and

then mostly they want experience for for for everyone they don't see fresher as a required candidate most of the time so uh compromise on something that you have to do job description exactly what you want to do you try to apply there it's no harm to apply there like if you get shortlisted then try for that um because anywh you are not going to get selected if you don't try it's 100% chance that you don't get selected but if you try there is still some chance so uh one thing is that job description and the other thing is like like we all know like CTC so they also have this expectation of CTC key particularly if I

start I should get this much 78 10 LPA but for a fresher it's very difficult to code that CTA because you cannot negotiate you don't have any leverage prev salary how can you make that how will you justify what you want yeah so whatever they give you you can just try can you go a little higher or can you just based on my uh experience or my skill set that you know based on my performance in the interview can can you go a little high maybe they can do that but if they don't do that don't reject that so the the most the first and the most foremost priority is that you start you actually land somewhere so there are

many opportunities after that even if you land in a job that you exactly don't require

defensive defensive but still you just start once uh and then after one year or maybe two years you can work on yourself right you can do certifications you can learn you can keep learning at least you have that com uh corporate experience you have that corporate known inside you and then after two years you will be much more skilled and experienced that you were when you didn't start so that's what I recommend I wanted to start in teaming but I went to absc because that was also uh also interesting for me so I went there and I did good that time so make sure that you keep applying don't miss any opportunity so and then don't set

expectations set it but be flexible yeah and then just start that's your first priority start and then you can internally switch or externally switch you have the leverage then you first have to create a leverage that's the first thing um and then uh if you talk about the thing that I started I I started as a beginner 2021 I got a job off campus I applied through Linkedin and they they got me so now the scenario has changed it's very difficult the market is competitive and the job market is not very good compared to the co times so I would recommend ke if you can find someone uh who is already there like a referral or a source someone whom you

know or even if you don't know just try and go because they also get benefited referral they get a bonus so if they feel that you're good enough if they know you that's better if they don't know you just go and try uh openings we get lot of referrals and even for any other company try to find individuals who work there in the similar role or in security role try to find those and referrals help a lot it help it has helped me it has helped many other people so it's no harm to do that I don't get any referral you are less than those people it's not like that everyone is like trying for a job so yeah go go

for that that's one more Advantage for you but yeah keep keep keep doing it keep trusting the process keep applying apply hundreds of places I have applied hundreds of places only the rever rate is around 5 to 10% only yeah so just keep doing that and make sure you are flexible all right that's great advice second thing pesting red teing we don't talk about SS although I mean it's not possible we have to talk about it so we have to I can't help it there are various SS out there ocp C ejpt PNP there are so many out there right CRP red teaming case AWS I mean I the list keeps on going on and on right

according to you what value do SS have do they actually I mean do do you feel that it is essential in this particular field if you want to be successful if you want to get a higher package you need to have search do you have do you know someone in particular J maybe sear near but they have a lot of knowledge and the other way around maybe and if you could share your advice over there as well I always treat sear as a short listing criteria based on the on paper stuff uh the requirements like for example uh for me I didn't have any search in the beginning I only had C and if you only have ch but uh I did get

a job based on the other factors that I had in my resume so it's just about the compensation that you can do in place of Sears SS are one of the best things to do they have the most leverage one of the most leverage in your resume and people only look for that search for you don't have projects you don't have internship ships you don't have previous experience previous work experience so that's when you need certification for a fresher it's highly important to do them because they don't have any leverage all right any other thing so your education first thing your skill set your experience and your certification that's what matters for as a fresher so what I did I always see

certification as a skill uh as a skill doing thing so man certification certification I always want to have something that proves that I can do something in this field so exam threshold if you clear that you are at least somewhere there at least you know something so so I gave OSP two years back or I thought this is something else it's very difficult the way they Sol the labs the way I was Tau the content it was very new to me and I fac a lot of difficulties it was only like after solving hundreds of lab machines I knew that I can do that you get into that muscle memory and it's very predictable like

OSP honestly it's not how pesting is done it's just like certain things that you should know before coming so that you can improvise there but uh in OSP it's a very well- defined path um and still is very difficult because the way they take the exam it's very daunting one day whole you have to just sit in one place and just look at the screen and five machine six Machin the pressure of your Proctor uh and the time period the time limit so the way they take the exam is daunting but itself in terms of the technicalities it's not very difficult so and then last year I gave uswe that's what I think it's way better than ocp in

terms of my skill set it's way better in terms of key actually you get to know how applications are made and you get to code everything you get to exploit in an automation

and that was two days it's way hard and then this time I'm giving uh EP this December this 20th December so it's one level next to OSP and it's it's difficult it's hard it's of course way more hard than ocp here it involves uh antivirus and those bypasses so it's very technical and very uh deep so I would say I'll just keep doing certifications every year not for like I want my resume to become more populated but I just want at least we know that we should know red teaming may you have to get through bypasses that's the only way so that's why I do that and even I would say this is not something that actual pentesters

do but it's still very close so uh at this point I honestly don't think I need I need certifications because I already have three to four years of experience yeah and I'll go somewhere I'll get a job because I have good experience I have skill set as well the short listing criteria might be a problem in red teaming because I have been in absc I've been in product Securities I have not been in red teaming yet so maybe um that can be a criteria but uh India HR they really don't know how to put in job descriptions so they just randomly put certifications there so that's bad thing that I feel if you are targeting

Indian companies so you have to get through that uh and competition is way more like people are doing those things and they'll think that if some someone has done those notification then uh we'll choose those person so that's why I said get referrals because it bypasses all the short listing criteria you'll get right to the interview and what you do in the interview that decides will you get job or not so in all in all certification are very good in terms of the skills that you get one of the best ways because there is no proper content available for if you talk about platforms like try Haack me hack the Box they are also there very good in terms

of practical skills but you don't have that systematic pressure or the systematic flow the whole domain uh knowledge that you can get like OSP it's very big the syllabus is very big yeah we also have a path and hack the box for that but you are on your own like Pro you have those skills like you can prove uh and you can exploit machines so that's when when when you give certifications like you give exam and you prove it you passed it and then I got a confidence key I I know certain stuff but if you are experienced enough you don't need certification just stop there certification um I I I have I know I

know some people on LinkedIn that they do that so I don't feel necessity of that and many people think that a certain type of certification like CIA M or cisp they'll get into manager role doing the certification so that's why they do that I I don't think it's necessary because uh once you uh get into the company you keep improving you get promoted and I mean ultimately you get promoted to a manager as well so you don't need that but for your own uh for for your own knowledge then definitely you can do but yeah just for a fresher if you are a fresher go for that at at Max two are enough uh if you can do

practical certifications that's better C is like a very Cakewalk now everyone does that so it's it's not very beneficial so apart from that what whatever you targeting J do that but don't make a hype of certification be normally if you can self-learn then it's also good you don't need certification but if you feel proper study pa uh and this is how it's done and I want to prove my skills or daunting so if you want to put yourself to test definitely go for for that and it has its value it has its value like EP uh oswe this 300 level of certification has their value platforms opportunities where you get um advantage of this not just for

jobs like Sak platform they they'll directly give you access to Sak if you do some certification like oswe they also

bypass three level B for that and also we have cobal platform if you have certification you you'll get to the interview phase right right away so those Advantage you have there but for Indian people it's very difficult to get certification as a fresher because yeah they are like I could have I couldn't have done that myself I always used my company so that's why I said find a job get a job get sponsorship and do certification all right that's my Mak sense so the last uh last two three questions then I think we have to wrap up uh a thing that uh let's consider a hypothetical situation I think a lot of people want the answer

for this question assume company and you want to hire someone right there is and there's so priority a person having more exp so like rank them according to you right experience and there is sorts projects um and then you know try hack me platforms ranks maybe and you know yeah Udi courses so how would you rank them according to you have SC priorities out when you're trying to hire someone um actually you're talking about fresher right everybody oh sorry as a fresher complete fresher yeah so um I exactly have taugh that a lot of time uh even if I don't have a company I still think about it what I feel is I will prefer someone who has explored a

lot as a fresher I don't see experience because they don't have it I'll just have someone who has done a lot of things stumbled upon a lot of things and failed a lot of times so they made a lot of projects I'll first prioritize that they had a lot of projects individual personal group anything that they have done yeah those projects how well they are like con domain how nuanced this it is like and what problem you're trying to solve that's one thing and then certification I know same follow that doesn't say so I cannot find that I'll just find that where they have gone how much they have done in this field and how

motivated they are so for a fresher um like projects matter and their internship do matter I I I feel projects are the first thing and there like where do you keep track me hack the box it's subjective but I'll make that priority as wellform you have this Rank and then you have done bug bounties I put bug bounties as well bug Val doesn't matter but you have done it you have at least submitted some certain number of reports 50 60 something like that and U like one page resume is enough you are a fresher you don't have many things education projects and then it comes U your internship your skills your achievements like um you want some want some CTF for

example you have participated in CTF I'll see that how many ctfs how many competitions how many conferences you have attended yeah so it so it actually tells key you are motivated you are curious about things you are keep you are just going here and there exploring things you're failing doesn't matter for me uh but you are just uh heading somewhere yeah you're just trying to find some some soles or some place that you want to be so that's my priority is um and I I'll not go on paper I'll just see interview short listing is how how well your resume is in terms of your head and uh shoulders got it got it sir that

that's a great answer and so I think uh we will need to conclude our podcast unfortunately and uh so you I I think there are a lot of questions that people have and I would really request maybe sometime later whenever you're free I'm sure people would love to you know continue uh would love you know to hear more from you and uh yeah so is there anything that you would like to tell our viewers about any interesting project or anything upcoming your new videos when when is your next video anything like that like I said um so new video I've planned a CDF video that will come next week um I want to give CTF as well time so uh

and then after that I have my exam December 20 so I'll be busy in that so we and then we have new year and then New Year I'll start something new I'll start more CDF videos I'll start preparing for a course that I'll make a course um once my exam is over once my results are out uh and hopefully if I'll pass I'll go ahead and uh I already thought that subject so I I thought uh I should focus on web because that's my yes focus part I I know Advanced web stuff so I'll focus on web uh those certification that I've done osw it's it's really helpful for that secure coding um and then

Advanced web pen testing that's my focus right now next year I think by May or June it will release and I also plan to update my existing courses like CFE courses so I'll update those courses as well most of them like the OSP one they are some new topics that I want to share and then that uh ch1 also uh some old topics I replaced with new so that's for my courses and then uh for YouTube uh I always think he the the topic that we got from this video the bug Bounty thing um and actually I thought of one more topic why I equit my previous job that people don't know they always ask

me many live why I left my previous job it was very good I was having the time of my life and I was getting everything I wanted but still I left it why why did I leave it so that's one thing that I should uh it's been a long time I know but I'm planning for that as well script ready I just need to shoot it and then YouTube will keep going on I'll just keep improving on YouTube um and then more practical videos I believe people will want to watch that if they complain that I don't give practicals when I give it just watch it yeah then yeah and most of it is a YouTube oriented and more

community events like this more podcast and more uh G giveaways more give backs and I'll visit more uni cities conferences and I'll I'll plan to visit somewhere else as well I I'll I'll let you know next year perfect that's great sir and again sir thank you so much for coming on this podcast it's been an absolute uh pleasure and hopefully we'll meet again soon and you know we'll continue this conversation and for everyone tuning in obviously if you guys don't know I mean I don't know where you guys are living you guys must be living under a rock make sure to check out bitten Tech and follow aners Journey on his YouTube channel you you guys can

also connect with him on LinkedIn and uh stay cyber safe stay secure and we'll see you in the next episode of besides weekly we are besides NOA and we are always beside you keep learning and keep your password strong and safe thank you everyone bye-bye bye-bye

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