How it Started and How it is going (Full Path for Beginners)

Saransh Saraf aka (MR23R0)
4 min readJun 3, 2022

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Hi Hacking Aspirants, I am Saransh Saraf and this is my story (some_part), which will help you to become a good hacker and get a job without investing 1 Rupees.

It all stared with One freaking challenge, I hope you got here with the same reason. Before we begin I want you recall that specific memory and wake up your Competitive Monster ;) because believe me you will need that “Josh”.

Recall your “Josh”

We’ve tried to make a good story view to explain the whole process

Staging : In 2017 when I was in School, where everyone was clear about their carrier choice I was (Mid bencher) the weakest link the whole class, and while watching Daredevil clips on YouTube suddenly in the recommendation section one video got my attention “WannaCry ransomware” :) and I played that 15 minute video and from then I never stopped. Currently I’m a Security Researcher (Employed) with little bug bounty success.

“Hacking requires Computer Scientist level knowledge”

So After that Wannacry video I started to collect knowledge about this field around, my teachers and seniors everyone said it’s illegal, but who gives a shit ?

I moved my search to the internet and I found one video which got my attention “Coding in C ++” I know this is not related to it, but what can I say at that time I knew nothing. So I learnt all that and got nowhere after a while I became bored… So I decided why not become a web developer and I learned LAMP Stack from CodeWithHarry (it was 2020).

Programming & Development is not necessary in hacking but it should be necessary.

Well You Have to believe YouTube can change your entire life, because again It recommended me a video of Sir IPPSEC (@ippsec) POPCORN and suddenly I slapped myself (thinking : how can I forget I wanna become a hacker not some developer or coder 😐 )

This was the first Hacking video I’ve watched : (At that time there was a 11 hour video but they’ve removed it now)

First Step towards hacking

What it did, it showed me some glimpse of the knowledge and fields I need to master. So at that time because of my mistakes I was a pretty good coder and developer 😎

Then I moved myself and started to learn Linux and Common Bugs/Vulnerabilities.

Networking
Web Application Penetration testing

These are all playlists and you should watch every episode of it.

I started to use this knowledge but after a while I realized that I still know nothing 😣 Then I heard about Hackerone & BugCrowd and I started to learn how people are making reports, how to find bugs and most importantly what to find.

Then An Indian Youtuber came to limelight with his hardwork SpinTheHack he actually taught me many things… well thanks to (@cyberzeel) with the help of him I found that there is a OWASP checklist and VDP Programs.

After learning all this and investing 5 hours a day, on April 2021 I decided now let’s hunt :) 1st Day I got my 1st Hall of Fame (Open SSH User Enum) 2nd Day I got my second Hall of Fame (Exif metadata Not Stripped) and then I never looked back…

I Started to communicate with the community (Started with following Sir Aditya Shende one of the best Indian Security Researcher) And the community Accepted me, but at this time I was in my 2nd Year College (with little success in bug bounty)

But As other people I wanted a Job so I can atleast get some fixed amount at the end of the month, and I asked around and everyone was telling me to do some certification but still one thing was in my mind why degree or certification if I have proper skills ? and I didn’t done any till now.

Through out the time I’ve found some great people in this community Fardeen Ahmed th3.d1p4k Sumon Nath Tuhin Bose Mayank Gandhi yashdharmani, Connect with them they’re really helpful.

I’ve Some Hall of fames at Redhat, NASA, Huawei, Airindia and NCIIPC etc, I’ve also published some articles. (Which shows that I’m consistent and working to become better )

One Day I started to send messages to HR of some companies and some replied and I joined a company :)

At the End I hope I didn’t bored you and you got the references and an Idea to start :)

Special thanks to {{Name}} for making this writeup possible :

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Saransh Saraf aka (MR23R0)

Writer of all kind, Left medium exclusive free content can now only be found on mr23r0.github.io