There are so many penetration testing tools to learn. I’m not sure if it’s even possible to learn them all. I’m actually starting to wonder if I’ll end up using a smaller set of “favorites” in the end. Do real penetration testers use all these tools all the time? It’s a lot, to me at least.

I remember reading somewhere that penetration testers usually end up specializing in some particular area after a while. I’m not sure what I would want to specialize in, but I do find reverse engineering binaries to be very interesting. As a software engineer I’m drawn to the complexity and I’ve used debuggers many times over the years.

I’m mostly studying Active Directory enumeration tools right now. Hack The Box teaches a lot of different ways to get hashes from Windows machines. The more I learn about exploiting Windows the more worried I am about having it installed on my gaming computer.

One thing for sure, the more I learn about cybersecurity the more I want to harden and protect my own computers.