Ellie Lara

wabi-sabi✨

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 19: switched gears today and focused on building a stronger understanding of cloud fundamentals. A change of pace from the hands-on work lately, but another piece of the bigger picture is starting to click.
#Pentesting #LearningJourney #Cloud

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 18: built my first vulnerable target lab with Kioptrix. Practiced host discovery, Nmap scanning, HTTP/SMB/SSH enumeration, and vulnerability research. Starting to see how enumeration turns raw scan results into potential attack paths.
#Pentesting #LearningJourney

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 17: dove into passive reconnaissance and OSINT—subdomain discovery, website fingerprinting, email and breach intelligence, and mapping an organization’s attack surface. Learning how good recon shapes everything that comes next.
#Pentesting #LearningJourney #Cybersecurity

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 16: Covered pentest assessment types, the OSI model, IP addressing, NAT, TCP vs UDP, ports, the three-way handshake, and even survived subnetting. Building the networking foundation one layer at a time.
#Pentesting #LearningJourney #Cybersecurity

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 15 Built my pentesting manual: methodology, tools & commands, lab journal, findings, APT/web, IPT/AD, AWS and interview prep. Setting up a system to document not just what I do, but why I do it.
#Pentesting #LearningJourney #Cybersecurity

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 14 of learning pentesting.
First hands-on session with Burp Suite: intercepted HTTP traffic, modified requests, reviewed history and used Repeater to test controlled changes.
Biggest takeaway: establish a baseline, change one variable, then compare the response.
#Learning

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 13 of learning penetration testing.
Today: HTTP requests and responses in Kali using curl—methods, headers, query parameters and request bodies.
Biggest takeaway: controllable input is a testing opportunity, not proof of a vulnerability.
#PenTesting #LearningJourney

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 12 of learning penetration testing.
Shorter session today focused on Linux networking practice: ss, Nmap, ports and service detection.
Biggest takeaway: open, closed and filtered are different observations—and conclusions should match the evidence.
#PenTesting #Cybersecurity

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 11 of learning penetration testing.
Today: Linux networking in Kali—interfaces, CIDR, routing, DNS, sockets, curl and Nmap.
Biggest takeaway: no response isn't proof a host is down, and your conclusions can't exceed what you actually tested.
#PenTesting #LearningJourney

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 10 of learning pentesting: Kali is officially up and running. Spent today troubleshooting VMware (including one stubborn invisible cursor) and getting hands-on with Linux navigation, permissions, pipes, grep, find, and processes. Building the foundation. #Cybersecurity

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 9 of learning penetration testing.
Today: parameterization + SQLi fundamentals.
Biggest takeaway: SQL errors aren't proof. Strong evidence comes from controlled, predictable changes in query behavior. Fix the root cause: separate code from data.
#CyberSecurity #PenTesting

[purr.in.ink @purrinink]

🐈‍⬛🤍..

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 8 of learning penetration testing.
Today: horizontal vs vertical access control, object vs function authorization, forced browsing + role-based access.
Biggest takeaway: test expected vs actual access systematically, not endpoint by endpoint at random.
#LearningJourney

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 7 of learning penetration testing.
Today: authentication, MFA, sessions, password resets + logout. Biggest lesson: authentication isn't just login. You have to follow how identity is established, maintained, recovered and terminated.
#CyberSecurity #PenTesting

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 6 of learning penetration testing.
Today was business logic: client vs server trust, validation, parameter tampering + workflow testing.
Big takeaway: weird input isn’t the real story. The impact is what happens when that bad state flows through the whole process.
#Learning

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 5 of learning penetration testing.
HTTP fundamentals today: requests, responses, methods, headers, cookies + sessions. Then practiced identifying IDOR/BOLA by testing whether one authenticated user could access another user's resources.
#CyberSecurity #PenTesting

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Power was out yesterday...Day 4 of learning penetration testing.
Today: subnets, CIDR, routing, NAT, firewalls + segmentation.
Biggest takeaway: least privilege isn't just about users. Overly broad network access can undermine the security controls around it.
#LearningJourney

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 3 of learning penetration testing.
Networking today: IPs, ports, TCP/UDP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS + service enumeration.
Biggest takeaway: an open port isn't automatically a vulnerability. Observe → hypothesize → verify → conclude.
#CyberSecurity #LearningJourney #Pentesting

[Ellie Lara @elilohelix]

Day 2 of learning penetration testing.
Today was Linux fundamentals: filesystem navigation, users, groups, permissions, processes, root + least privilege.
Biggest takeaway: a system can work exactly as configured and still be insecure if it was configured badly.
#cybersecurity