ABOUT

Borrowing this idea from uses this and my pal, Dan.

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). And yes, that’s pranqster like the beer (great beer, by the way), but also loosely influenced by the DC Comics character, Oswald Loomis (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

  • 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/Computer Security Systems

WHAT HARDWARE DO YOU USE?

I mainly use laptops these days, even at my desk. You’ll usually find me on a Lenovo machine. I also have a dedicated System76 hacking machine. At this moment for mobile device, I am rocking a Pixel 5 (will be upgrading this soon as it’s EOL in October). When at my desk, I’m using my custom WASD 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. Very rarely will I make exceptions (but, I do). My Lenovo laptop runs Fedora. My System76 hacking machine runs Kali. I only run Windows on my personal machines in VMs these days. I strictly use Pixel devices and they always run GrapheneOS. I use Bash as my shell and nano or vim as my general terminal editor. If I need to code something, I do so in VSCodium and keep all of notes and documentation in Obsidian. I keep all of the goods in Bitwarden. For 2FA, I use Aegis Authenticator. Of course, can’t live without my tunes. Those are handled through moOde audio player or sometimes Spotify.

I typically have the following few windows open:

If I’m doing some web app hacking, I might have ZAP running as well (been trying Caido more recently). Most of my hacking is done in Terminator, though — nmap, crackmapexec and impacket scripts are some must-haves.

Some apps on my mobile device include: AntennaPod for podcasts, Feeder for RSS, and Mastodon/Jerboa (Lemmy)/LinkedIn for infosec news and just keeping up with the community. Absolutely love Warpinator for transferring files between devices on my local network.

Last, but certainly not least, if you’re one of the lucky people to have my personal phone number, my preferred method of contact is via Signal Messenger. After all, friends don’t let friends text unencrypted.