My first interaction with a computer came when I had just completed my KCPE. My dad wanted some documents printed & thus sent me to a local cyber cafe. And that's how my journey into #infosec started.

A thread. https://twitter.com/mukhtarsalim80/status/1328315043029651457

At the cyber cafe, I watched as the attendant worked the computer & that was when I knew I had found my bae. It had a greyscale monitor, CRT, white qwerty keyboard, and that mouse that had a ball inside it . I left the café determined to learn more. Unfortunately..

I did not come into contact with another computer until I joined high school. We had computer classes & they were my favourite. I was a good friend to the computer lab Captain who allowed us to play games on Saturdays when others were enjoying their "entertainment".

But when I became the school captain, I had unlimited access to the computer lab. I became so good at the basic computer operations that some teachers used to ask me to type their papers for them. I knew how to "mail merge" . Very few people could do that .

In form 2, I came across a small interactive program developed in Pascal (can't remember the name - ecl*something). You could basically chat with the program. I was overwhelmed, & challenged. By the time I was done with form 2, I had written my first "hello world" with Pascal.

So I decided to pursue computer studies as an examinable subject for my KCSE. I did my form 4 project in VB 6.0, developed a hospital management system. VB was just crazy. Passed my KCSE & went on to campus. In my first year, I came across HTML. Looked interesting.

Developed my first static website in basic HTML, learnt about CSS & Javascript, & got oriented to PHP. I think I enjoyed programming, I still do. I fell in love with PHP in my 2mf year & have never looked back. As for infosec, I brushed shoulders with it in my first year...

when, out of curiosity, developed a malware. It was an annoying program that kept opening & closing the cd drive tray till the computer became unresponsive. Fortunately or unfortunately, that malware never left my computer. A few months later, I developed a malware removal tool.

It was a simple tool created with vbscript. I called it "joneskill" (I know I wasn't so creative then ). If you were in Maseno Uni, between 2009 - 2011, maybe you could have come across it. It was useful during manual virus removal. BTW, I started removing malware, at a fee.

Then, I did not know that I was being ushered into the world of #CyberSecurity. I became the go-to person when you had an annoying malware that you wanted removed manually when other AVs had failed. Maseno, then, was a testbed for Avira AV. I think almost all computers...

in the campus had @Avira installed. I became fully immersed into #CyberSecurity in my 3rd year when I got scammed . I lost about $320 to a scam site that claimed to sell cheap laptops. It was based in China . I overlooked a series of red flags..

I got the link to the website in my spam folder, & first mistake, marked it as not spam. I went ahead and "shopped" for a nice cheap laptop (2nd flag) which I placed in my cart. 3rd flag, the only checkout options available was through transfer via @WesternUnion.

Long story, I donated around $320 . I was angry and vowed to bring their site down. With my limited knowledge then, of course I wasn't successful. They closed shop & disappeared. If only I could find them now . Anyway, that encounter showed me how gullible I was &

was determined to change that. I studied (read Googled), as much as I could about common application security flaws & slowly got fully recruited into #CyberSecurity. And that is how my journey from a computer noob began. Today, when I look at my journey, I can see how...

I have grown and developed over the years. Sometimes all you need is motivation, and I got mine from the scammers. Find yours .