Today, I had a really interesting experience at a cybersecurity workshop organized at my university. Before we start talking about the workshop, I would like to give a brief background about myself. I am Ankit Seth, a CSE student having a specialization of cybersecurity. This should make it clear that it was really a valuable session for me to attend. What followed was exceptional.
Our first speaker for the day was Mr. Shyam Sundar Ramaswami. Anyone belonging to the cybersecurity industry doesn't need an introduction to the name. What surprised me was how well he understood our point of view and presented the session in a way with which we could relate to. Cybersecurity is a domain which requires an immense amount of knowledge to understand everything. Yet, he was able to explain the concepts with ease without going into details. He inspired all of us with stories of his work and gave us tips to improve our skills to pursue a career in this field. I was thoroughly intrigued throughout this session and he might have ignited a new spark, a passion for cyber-forensics and ethical hacking inside me.
The best part of the day was the second session when our university alumni, Mr. Dharmaraju SaiSatish joined us. The reason why it was interesting was because it was a lab session. He actually showed us how many types of cyber attacks are possible and he even conducted few of them in authorized websites. All of us were in awe and watched them like it was a magic show. Coming to the most interesting part, towards the end of the session, he challenged all of us to hack one of his own websites and gather info from the database. The fun part was whoever did it first would be given a shot at an internship opportunity at his company!! I was definitely up for the task, more so because I had passion for ethical hacking from a very young age. I quickly conducted a sql-injection attack on the site and I got the data within minutes. He called me to the stage and told me to display the results to my friends.
Here's a screenshot of some of the data I gathered:
This workshop was really special for me not only because I secured an internship opportunity at such a great company but also it opened my eyes and made me realize how great a field cybersecurity is and what can I achieve if I continue to work sincerely in the rest of my college life. There's two more sessions scheduled tomorrow and I can't wait to be there. That'll be all. Thank you for being with me till here. Until then, see you and have a great day!