ABOUT

Borrowing this idea from uses this.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DO YOU DO?

Hi! My name is Marcel aka pranqster in most places (you won’t find me in too many places, though). Yes, like the beer (great beer, by the way), but also loosely influenced by Oswald Loomis (The New 52, of course).

I’m a highly motivated IT professional with a strong interest in penetration testing and network security. A lot of my time is spent learning new and better ways to get things done.

I’m also very passionate about privacy rights, Linux and the open source community. Most days you will find me behind my mainly open source network/homelab (which I run all of my websites behind, including this one), testing out new things or working on certifications.

CERTIFICATIONS

  • The SecOps Group Certified Social Engineering Defense Practitioner (CSEDP)
  • eLearnSecurity Penetration Tester eXtreme (eCPTX)
  • eLearnSecurity Web application Penetration Tester eXtreme (eWPTX)
  • Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP)
  • Offensive Security Wireless Professional (OSWP)
  • eLearnSecurity Web application Penetration Tester (eWPT)
  • eLearnSecurity Certified Professional Penetration Tester (eCPPT)
  • eLearnSecurity Junior Penetration Tester (eJPT)
  • EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
  • CompTIA Security+

EDUCATION

  • M.S. Information, Network & Computer Security
  • B.S. Computer Science

WHAT HARDWARE DO YOU USE?

I mainly use laptops these days, even at my desk. I have a daily driver machine and I have a dedicated hacking machine. For mobile, I strictly use Google Pixel devices. When at my desk, I’m using my custom mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Green switches (I like my keys heavy and obnoxious, haha).

AND WHAT SOFTWARE?

I’m all about open source software on my personal setups, but I will make some exceptions as you will see below. I have used many a *nix distributions in my time, but I have seen the light that is Fedora. My hacking machines/VMs typically run a lightweight Ubuntu-based distro and Exegol. Pixel devices always run GrapheneOS. If I need to edit code, I do so with Vim (sometimes VSCodium or Sublime Text) and I keep all of my notes in Obsidian. Of course, I can’t live without my tunes. Those are usually handled locally through Volumio.

When on my laptop, I typically have the following windows open:

If I’m doing web app hacking, I might have Burp or ZAP running as well. If I’m in a terminal, though, Nmap, NetExec and Impacket scripts are some must-haves.

Some apps on my mobile device include: AntennaPod for podcasts, Feeder for RSS, and Mastodon and LinkedIn for infosec news and just keeping up with the community.

Last, but certainly not least, my preferred method of contact is Signal Messenger. After all, friends don’t let friends text unencrypted.