I’m Santos. I spent two and a half years studying finance at university before realizing what I actually wanted to do was cybersecurity. Not a dramatic pivot, more like finally noticing what I was genuinely passionate about: Linux, poking at networks, understanding how systems break. I’m now studying security with a blue team focus: detection and response, starting from the fundamentals (networking, Linux, detection).

This site is where I document that process in public. The plan:

• Writeups of retired Hack The Box machines. I’m not going to stick to only defensive boxes or Sherlocks; I want to attack boxes too, because understanding how things get broken is what makes you better at detecting it
• Notes on Linux, networking, and detection as I go deeper into blue team fundamentals

Why write in public? Because explaining something is the only honest test of whether you understand it. If these notes help one person stuck on the same machine I was stuck on, even better.

Everything here reflects what I knew at the time of writing, which means some of it will age badly. I’ll try to keep it honest rather than correct.

If you want to say hi, the about page has my contacts.