Yoo Welcome to Issue #19 of Navigating Security.

🍃Quote of the week:

What To Expect 🫡

A new segment where a friend of mine who’s somewhat of a noob writes about his experiences and how he is trying to break into the industry.

We plan on having each perspective embody a persona of some sort, kinda like Adonis vs Jeffrey-type vibes. Let me know if you have any ideas of what these characters should be.

This Week’s YouTube Video:

⚠️ The newsletter is currently not sponsored

This is a new segment of the newsletter. Everything is told from my perspective, someone who is still far from Tadi’s level, yet still aspires to it and might even surpass it.

$ whoami_

I’m just another aspiring hacker. My name is Byron, I recently graduated with a degree in informatics and data analytics and with that out of the way I can finally pursue my goal of starting a cybersecurity consultancy. I think I am aiming to be a pentester first and see how I can grow my security skills from both a red-team and blue-team perspective, I don’t intend on following every single step of the roadmap and I will simply be skipping anything I am fairly experienced with.

With that being said the road map has been prescribed but now you get to see it in full effect, I have been on my cybersecurity journey for well over a year and the fact that I hadn’t finished my bachelor’s was halting my progress to a degree but a lot of the initial steps prescribed I have already taken, I have done a lot of the learning paths on TryHackMe including the Junior Penetration Tester path. As a result, I start with the second phase which involves attempting various Portswigger labs

Diving into PortSwigger's SQL injection labs was both enlightening and rewarding. The labs start by introducing the basics of SQL injection—finding vulnerable input fields and crafting payloads to manipulate queries. While the initial exercises were straightforward, they served as a crucial reminder of how even simple attacks, like injecting ' OR '1'='1, can expose sensitive data if applications are not properly secured.

As I progressed, the challenges escalated, pushing me to uncover hidden parameters, bypass filters, and extract specific database details. One of the standout lessons was learning to enumerate the database structure systematically using payloads like UNION SELECT null-- to fetch column names and data. The more advanced labs required leveraging blind SQL injection techniques, where I had to infer responses based on time delays or page behaviour, testing patience and precision.

The experience underscored several key takeaways:

• The importance of input validation: Simple errors in input sanitization can lead to disastrous consequences.

• The need for parameterized queries: This change could mitigate nearly all the vulnerabilities I encountered.

• The necessity of continuous testing: Many vulnerabilities were subtle and would likely go unnoticed without thorough and consistent testing.

Completing these labs not only sharpened my skills but also reminded me why staying vigilant as a cybersecurity professional is critical. I am now more confident in identifying and exploiting SQL injection vulnerabilities—and, more importantly, in understanding how to secure systems against them.

From my initial experience with the labs I do have some questions though;

❓How do you build muscle memory when it comes to OWASP-related vulnerabilities, even when you’re expecting SQL injection it’s almost like each time you’re doing something completely different.

❓How do you maintain patience and precision when using time-based blind SQL injections?

❓Can you explain why the classic payload ' OR '1'='1 works, and in what scenarios it might fail?

❓Does experience with app development help with web app hacking?

❓What’s the best approach to mastering OWASP-related vulnerabilities, since they seem to be a common requirement on job postings?

Tadi will answer some of these questions in the following newsletter issue and, if necessary, in a video as well.

Until next time 🫡

⏱️Incase you missed the previous issue, here you go:

Suggestions

Hit me up on Discord or LinkedIn if you have anything you feel would be cool to include. Thanks, Cheers.