Slept Like a Noob, Woke Up Like a Hacker: A Cybersecurity Day That Changed My Thinking
Some days in cybersecurity start with coffee and terminals.
Some start with broken builds and cursed BIOS screens.
And some… start with a phone call that rewires how you think about your entire career.
This one started when I was dead asleep.
The Call That Pulled Me Out of Sleep Mode
I was comfortably hibernating when my phone rang.
“Hey man, are you coming to the club office today?”
It was my brother.
Not brother-by-blood, but brother-by-mentorship. The guy who has seen more broken networks, failed interviews, and late-night debugging sessions than most people see Netflix episodes.
I told him I wasn’t coming. Exams day. Club members busy. Chill mode.
He replied casually:
“Okay, I’m coming today. Just informing you.”
That sentence hit harder than a failed flutter run.
I instantly woke up.
“Wait… I’m also coming.”
And just like that, sleep mode was disabled.
Club Office Conversations > Any Classroom Lecture
What followed wasn’t a normal conversation. It was one of those raw, unfiltered, hacker-to-hacker discussions that never make it into textbooks.
We talked about everything.
Career.
Clubs.
Infrastructure.
Interviews.
Hackathons.
Automation.
And mistakes. Lots of mistakes.
The kind you only learn from after breaking things in production.
n8n, Automation, and a Reality Check I Needed
I told him what I was working on.
“I’m building an n8n automation for LinkedIn posts. Fully free. No SaaS traps. Pure workflow.”
He smiled. That dangerous mentor smile.
“That’s good. Really good. You’re reducing time complexity. Automating boring stuff. That mindset is solid.”
Then came the but.
“But listen carefully. If you’re automating only for yourself, that’s learning. If you’re automating for a club or a company, that’s career growth.”
He didn’t tell me to stop.
He didn’t say it was useless.
He simply shifted my perspective.
Automation isn’t just about saving time.
It’s about solving someone else’s problem at scale.
That line stayed in my head longer than any exploit chain.
The Worst Interview Stories Are the Best Lessons
Then the conversation took a darker turn.
Interview war stories.
He told me about his worst cybersecurity interview experience. The kind where the panel doesn’t care about buzzwords. They care about how you think when things break.
No fancy certifications talk.
No “what is cybersecurity” nonsense.
Just brutal, practical questions.
And honestly? This is gold. So here are important cybersecurity interview questions every serious learner should be ready for:
🔐 Cybersecurity Interview Questions That Actually Matter
- Explain a security incident you personally handled. What went wrong?
- How would you secure a small company network with limited budget?
- Difference between IDS and IPS — and where would you deploy them?
- What happens after you type a URL and press Enter (security perspective)?
- How do you monitor logs and what alerts matter the most?
- Explain a real vulnerability you exploited or fixed.
- How do firewalls actually work at packet level?
- What security mistakes do fresh engineers usually make?
- How would you detect a fake mobile app or phishing website?
- If production goes down at 2 AM, what’s your first move?
Notice something?
No theory overload.
No memorized definitions.
Just experience, thinking, and responsibility.
Infrastructure, Networks, and How Education IT Really Works
He started talking about his older projects.
How he managed real infrastructure.
How internal networks in educational institutions actually function.
How access control, segmentation, and monitoring are often held together by hope and one senior admin.
This part hit hard.
Because most students think IT networks are magical clouds.
In reality, they’re fragile systems managed by humans who also get tired.
Understanding this makes you a better defender.
Hackathons, Fake Apps, and the “Why This Problem Again?” Question
We discussed recent hackathons.
Cybersecurity theme.
Fake apps.
Fake websites.
The classic question popped up:
“Why do hackathons keep asking existing problem statements?”
The answer is uncomfortable.
Because most people still don’t solve them properly.
Detecting fake apps isn’t just scanning APKs.
It’s metadata, behavior, permissions, reputation, infrastructure, patterns.
Same problem. Deeper execution.
That’s where real innovation lives.
The Project We Can’t Talk About (Yet)
We started working on a project.
Can’t talk about it. Not published.
But I can say this:
It involved Flutter, Dart, Python, backend logic, and real-world debugging pain.
No tutorial vibes.
Just:
- Environment setup hell
- Dependency conflicts
- Mobile device permission issues
- Local server communication failures
- Real hardware refusing to cooperate
The kind of work that teaches you more than ten “Hello World” projects combined.
It wasn’t about features.
It was about making the workflow stable and reproducible.
That’s real engineering.
What That Day Actually Taught Me
That day didn’t teach me a tool.
It taught me how to think.
- Automation should serve people, not ego
- Interviews test mindset, not memory
- Infrastructure knowledge beats surface-level hacking
- Real projects are messy — and that’s the point
- A good mentor doesn’t give answers, he adjusts your direction
And sometimes, all it takes is a phone call to pull you out of sleep and into clarity.
Final Thought
If you’re in cybersecurity and you’re only collecting tools, stop.
If you’re only chasing certificates, pause.
If you’re automating just to look cool, rethink.
Build. Break. Fix. Repeat.
And find yourself a brother who tells you uncomfortable truths.
That’s where growth actually begins.