Intro

There’s a strange thrill in watching a digital door unlock—
Not with a key, but with code.
Not with brute force, but with understanding.

That first time you breach a system, not by chance, but because you knew—
Exactly where to hit.
How to listen before you speak.
How to blend in before you strike.

It’s not just technical.
It’s poetic.

This log is about that moment.

💣 The Entry Point

After diving deep into the rhythm of packets, ports, pings, and the art of cryptography, I found myself standing at the edge of something darker—and far more exciting: exploitation.

See, scanning is passive.
But breaking in? That’s active awareness.
Not out of malice—never that.
But because if you understand how something breaks,
you’re one step closer to knowing how it truly works.

So I spun up my VM. Loaded up a vulnerable machine.
Installed my toolkit.
And met my new favorite chaos engine:

Metasploit.

⚙️ Learning to Break: Metasploit 101

Metasploit isn’t just a framework—it’s a sandbox for strategic rebellion.

I learned how to:

Navigate msfconsole like a terminal wizard
Use msfvenom to craft payloads like poison-tipped arrows
Select and fire exploits like lining up a perfect shot
Establish sessions and escalate shells
Shift from default to control

But here’s where it changed:
I stopped copy-pasting and started thinking.

In The Blue Room (TryHackMe), every move felt like a puzzle:

“Why this exploit?”
“What service is exposed?”
“Can I pivot from here?”
“What’s the OS hiding?”

I wasn’t just hacking.
I was listening.
Reading the room—literally and metaphorically.

🧠 Privilege Escalation & Post Exploitation

It’s one thing to enter.
It’s another to take over.

Once in, the real game began:

Selected and used post modules that served my required purposes
Searched files like sifting through digital drawers
Found and cracked password hashes (yep, John did his magic)
Escalated privileges with surgical precision
Analyzed services, processes, and misconfigurations

I didn’t just walk in and leave.
I studied the architecture.
Learned the rhythm of its failures.
And left only with the knowledge I came for—and a few flags as souvenirs 😌.

🧰 What I Actually Learned

Anyone can run commands.
But understanding the system?

That’s the craft.

💡 Metasploit is powerful, but blind fire means nothing if you don’t know what you’re aiming for.
💡 Every exploit is a riddle. Most answers are already in the system—you just have to ask the right questions.
💡 Privilege escalation isn’t about fancy tools—it’s about patience, precision, and pattern recognition.
💡 Real growth starts the moment you stop being a script-kiddie and start being a thinker. A reader of systems. A student of failure.

🧙‍♂️ From Learner to Operator

This wasn’t a tutorial.
This was a transformation.

It was me sitting under dim lights, caffeine-fueled, heart jittery, eyes locked on a terminal—
Not just watching logs scroll,
but feeling like I had finally cracked a language.

This was the spark again.
That same one I felt the day I chose cybersecurity.
The same spark I felt when I deleted my Steam library and told myself:
“You don’t need escape anymore. You need mastery.”

Because I don’t chase speed.
I chase depth.
I crave understanding.

Because this isn’t just about breaking systems.
It’s about breaking into my next chapter.

🌐 Next Up: Web Hacking

The machine is done.
The flags are found.
The fire’s still burning.
Now it’s time to hit the web.

— Bornov | WizB 🧙‍♂️

Check GitHub for my notes and writeups

Cipher's Log #3: Breaking & Entering-My First Exploits