BSidesNCL 2020 - Hackers and Healing - @bsdbandit

all right so today um this is my talk is on hackers and healing so with hackers and healing um the reason i came up with this um topic and and again a little bit about myself let me share my um can i share my screen

here we go so can everybody see my screen now so let's see here we go all right so awesome perfect so with hackers and healing um the reason i came up with this side a little bit about myself um i'm a red teamer slash threat hunter um of course you see the alphabets the oswp oscp um i'm a huge wretch i'm a huge fan of retro gaming and um of course i'm the current games and everything else but i love retro gaming it takes me back to a special place um i'm a member of mental health hackers nova hackers detectives podcasts um and several others which you'll you'll see later on so let's hop to it so the reason

i wanted to talk about um hack the concept of hackers and healing is i want today show you how you can keep up to date with your current skill set but also improve your mental health as well give you that balance that's the purpose of this talk today um just a little backstory so um i've been in the industry for quite a while now over 10 plus years and i've seen it's ups i've seen its downs i've met so many people around the world and had several different conversations and a little bit about myself i too at one point in time battled with depression and thank god i made it out and this is my story to you so

when you're you know as um infosec folks in general uh even though it says hacker as infosec folks in general i'm really sorry to show him presented you at the moment on the screen um it's showing what now they're like the presented view i got your whole yeah i've got the whole screen so oh i'm sorry that's all right you know what we've had all the gremlins going on so ah you can see the current screen right i can see the screen i can see the slides down the side of it though as well oh awesome okay um so whatever you want it carry on sorry so um in infosec in in general a lot of times we're

always you know we're always constantly on the go we're always constantly moving moving moving that's why as you see on this slide here is that i call it the digital hamster wheel and the digital hamster wheel as you can see there's a hook for it it's not so i can't prefer interrupting it's it's showing i've still got slide one uh oh let's go back maybe unsure resha it might just be zoom being being zoomy yeah let's let's try that again i want to see the hamster wheel i'm excited yeah joe she may have to switch monitors i think so could be possibly okay um well you might just need to share the app is the other one that might work

let's see zoom live zoom live or how about just show the whole desktop let's go and see how it works yeah try sharing the thing sure the whole desktop let's let it all out there we go still on slide one no i i put it on slide one how about now when you take that that doesn't matter yeah it's great this guy sorry awesome here we go well this was the slide i was talking about earlier a little bit about myself as you can see mental health hackers nova hackers detections um podcast which is um dedicated to 100 blue teaming right and of course as you know i'm a retro gamer and as you can

see with my little mushroom on my head so here's the digital hamster wheel right here it's it matter of fact let's try this because i want you to see the the spinning just go back ah go back okay can ah it's going too fast all right go back one more all right can you see the digital hamster wheel now it is spinning to play yay all right now we're we're we're here okay so with the digital hamster wheel this is why i call it digital hamster wheel because that a lot of times as folks as infosec and just in any industry really you know you don't have to be an infosec but in any industry really we're always

just trying to figure it out whether it's like trying to keep up to date um of course making time for family employment um and a lot of us are and especially due to um the pandem covet um we're working over 40 hours a week and all of this for chasing not just well even though i have a dollar bill there everyone has their own motivations whether it's success or greatness or whatever else but that's why i call it the digital hamster wheel because it's never enough you're constantly on it and as life has shown us time and time again two things can even happen when you're on the digital hamster wheel either you're going to get off on your own

or someone's going to have to carry you off but the wheel will continue to spin so that's why i call it the digital hamster wheel now for us how can we get all how can we obtain all of these things without having to go through again figuring out like working over 40 hours a week and fighting to make time for family fighting imposter syndrome and many other issues i tell you how and coming up even before i even got into infosec community whatever i was involved in say hey what's the key to success and everybody always gives you the same one word hard work that's it but as life has shown me and as time's gone on i realize

that that's only a part of the puzzle what it actually is is that you need exercise you need to get into you know healthy eating healthy sleeping patterns definitely i love this one taking time off for yourself that is so important and i know as like infosec folks we like to keep going because we think that we possibly think that we're like robots we have to keep going we have to keep up to date and if we take time off we lose time and we lose we lose out on something somebody else can take our spot and that is so far from the truth it's so far from the truth taking time off gives you that time to

recharge it gives you that time to think and more more than you really realize it helps you solve the problem that you were actually working on by taking time off and then you can add in the last piece of hard work which i mean if we want to be successful at anything practice makes perfect i truly believe in that but i also believe in the others as well too because they make a a huge difference in your lifestyle and how you approach things in life now i want to just jump to the healing part we've we've got to we know what we know what the problem is we know what we're going through we know what we're

doing here and now let's get to some healing um for me personally this is what's helped me um starting out by let's just get physical and it doesn't you don't have to be like in the gold's gym and lifting like a thousand pounds to get physical it could be just a simple walk we could just start by walking just you know put in your earbuds or your headphones and just go take a walk look at what's going on outside you know it's still the earth is beautiful and i think we all should just take a look and sit down and look at what's going on around us i'm in light of everything that's happening but

getting out getting physical whether it's weightlifting whether it's um yoga um that's truly helped as well too just doing yoga exercises has really helped out a lot too along with just basic stretching um i think like in early in the morning when i first get up the first thing i do take a quick deep breath and then get into just basic stretches and then i go out and actually you know either if it's a yoga stretch or if i just want to go take a walk but just do something physical get up out of those chairs and just and do something that you enjoy that that helps with the blood flow that helps with the thinking process as well

when you're working on specific problems in infosec that's part of the healing this is the beginning part of the healing process getting physical another thing i wanted to point out and this is just some of the things if you don't have any ideas i wanted to you know throw some ideas out there as you can see with number 39 i put in um yoga um i think that's truly um fun for me but for others here's some ideas if you can't think of anything here are some ideas on you know what you can get into as far as like hobbies is concerned um and it could be something if you if you truly enjoy like tech maybe it could

be something outside of what you do on your normal daily basis like if you're a blue team or maybe you want to look into just um hardware or whatever else but just something outside of your daily normal job as far as like with hobbies is concerned um for myself personally i've started taking up like just like cooking um not trying to be wolfgang puck and a chef but i just want to be decent at cooking so i figured you know what i'm gonna take that up as a hobby and i have several different ways so that's just one of them another one is mechanical keyboards i love mechanical keyboards it just it's just something about it that just

says art like the beauty of the keyboards and the the patterns of how the keys work it's just it's just a beautiful thing for me and it helps me relax and it takes me back to a place so as to retro gaming it takes you back to a place where times were simpler it's it's more of like that's like my zen so i challenge everyone whoever's watching today try to find your zen whether it's within a hobby or whether it was just spending time with folks that's that's a that's a that could be a hobby as well you can plan game night game board night you can do so many different things so hobby just doesn't have to be

something that's physical it can be something as mental as well too so you can get into if you're you know and this is all part of the healing process to get off getting off of that digital hamster wheel you can also get into looking into mental health um looking into therapy you know looking into helping others you know that's i you know me personally um i i think that's an awesome thing when you can when you can help others as well you know putting a smile on someone's face and that's for free putting a smile on somebody's faces for free so these are things you know definitely you know would want to check out i mean it's

it's pretty awesome what you can what you can do once you pick up a hobby and then you can show other people those hobbies and they can put a smile on their face so the energy's always infectious and and and i love it now another part of the healing process stop over extending yourselves it's okay to push back on certain projects it's okay to say no it's okay to take again this is the whole process of taking time off you know you can't it's impossible to do great work or great things in general if you're over extending yourselves because now you have to look at okay what am i doing over here okay i'm on

this schedule and as you can see as the young lady in the middle she's trying to actually work on something on her laptop but then the kids hanging off her neck and then things need to be done around the house um you see the other picture which is my favorite pick you're walking everything's burning up around you but you're still walking forward to try to do something else instead of extinguishing the fire that's burning up around you these are things overextension can lead to so many different things and this is why it's it's truly important just to to have that balance and to have that you know what i already have five things on my plate i

don't need a sixth one i'm gonna pass on this project and it's okay to say that that doesn't make you any less of anything to just say no no go back well it's kind of switched around here so go back to i'm just going to stay with i'm going to stay with this um i'm going to go over my slide right here for now but um still want to just keep talking um again i'm not i'm not a big slide person i love to have conversations and just talk but in general um i think if anything this pandemic should show us that hey it's okay to take a step back i think this is showing

us we need to just take a step back and reevaluate everything that we're doing especially like in in in our infosec community you know i've i've seen several people who are you know that you know they're really going through some things you know and i think we should just reach out to folks and really check on each other and again whether we realize or not we're all in this together and i definitely want to see all of us come out together because it's so important and i've personally if if you don't if you've never met me in person or if you've um ever seen me online on the bsd bandit on twitter i personally have a passion for

people and what's going on and i love when other folks are doing great i love when other folks are just getting into their hobbies and making change and that's why i wanted to just take a break from just the my my typical talks which was related to like red teaming and blue teaming i wanted to talk about hackers as humans and going through a healing process because we're all all in need of healing i'm i try to heal every day because with everything that's going on out there it's sometimes just everything that you see on the news and everything and that's another thing try to limit and this is something i have to learn limit

your news exposure i usually get at least five minutes i get the news then i'm gone i'm out of there that's it i cut the tv off and move on with the day because constantly seeing those images constantly hearing the bad news constantly hearing things that are not good eventually that seeps into your energy and it and then of course um that's never a good thing so these are things that i've actually learned and still learning you know during the healing process that you know we we need to just really like come together i'm truly passionate about this and i want to leave and i want to leave some time open for questions as well too

i didn't want to just spend the whole time just rambling and if anybody has questions i'm an open book ask me anything and i will definitely answer