SOC Simulator: Upload & Conquer

Introduction It’s time for more SOC Simulator challenges! Today I’ll be doing the Upload & Conquer scenario. You can find this on the scenarios page. This one is not another phishing-based scenario like my previous SOC simulator writeup. Phishing emails have a lot of red-flags that you can look out for. Once you know what to look for it can be fairly easy to spot. I don’t know if there will be any other phishing-based scenarios, but I’m always happy to see more content! ...

September 23, 2025 · 8 min · 1663 words · Ligniform

SOC Simulator: Phishing

Introduction I haven’t been able to delve in to the SOC Simulators that TryHackMe offer yet. Most online learning platforms are more tailored for red-team experiences. A vulnerable VM will be spun up for you to attack and retrive flags, wahoo! The blue team side feels like it might take some more resources (I have nothing to back this claim up) and preparation. For a normal CTF you can give a vague note of ‘Get the root flag in /root/flag.txt’ and let the users go wild. They can get creative with their approach if they want. In a SOC simulation you don’t really want them getting creative. If you offer a phishing email you don’t want them to break in to the sender email (At least I hope that’s not what this room is about). I’m interested in how the SOC Simulator identifies correct answers. ...

September 19, 2025 · 15 min · 2990 words · Ligniform

CTF Writeup: The Game

Introduction I’ve been pretty busy lately. So today I’m just doing a very short little challenge room, The Game. There was a neat little game hacking room during the 2024 Advent of Cyber event. It was a pretty good teaching moment for memory overflows and exploitation. This is just a beginner/easy room. So it might not be as exciting, but I’m still happy to keep my streaks up and continue a bit of red-teaming. Let’s see what this challenge room entails! ...

September 8, 2025 · 2 min · 348 words · Ligniform

Tata’s Cybersecurity Analyst Job Simulation

Introduction Just like my last two posts, today I’ll be going through Tata’s job simulation, also available through theforage.com. Where the Mastercard simulator focused on Phishing, and the Deloitte one had a focus on network logs, this simulator is more focused on Identity and Access Management. I’ve not heard of Tata before. After a quick search I found out they’re an Indian multinational. They look like a Tesla competitor based on how their EVs look. What the company does doesn’t really matter. A phishing email is a phishing email at the end of the day. We’ll not be looking at Phishing today though (Unfortunately), time to delve into IAM. ...

August 20, 2025 · 10 min · 1934 words · Ligniform

Mastercard’s Cybersecurity Virtual Experience

Introduction If you’ve read my last post you’ll know I found a free, self-paced training resource that let you get some experience without needing to leave the house. It turns out that MasterCard has a similar virtual experience available!. These virtual experiences are all run through a platform called theforage.com which seems to offer quite a few of these. Task one: Design a phishing email simulation Here’s the task overview of this task: ...

August 12, 2025 · 5 min · 907 words · Ligniform