Learning in public
From a help-desk background and a Security+ cert into hands-on security — documented honestly, lab by lab, wins and dead-ends alike.
001 Field journal // My path in cybersecurity
Break into cybersecurity.
Break into cybersecurity.
The right way.
A security student's field journal — I'm documenting the journey, sharing hands-on hacking challenges anyone can try, and building toward a SOC that defends Canadian small businesses.
operator@barracks:~$cat ./mission.txt
Ethics-first, always
Free hands-on challenges
Built in Ontario, Canada
02 The mission // Why this exists
Learn in the open. Help others. Build a SOC.
Hacker Barracks is my field journal and training ground — everything I pick up on the way into cybersecurity, turned into something other people can actually use.
Hands-on challenges
Free, ethics-first challenges you can run right in your browser — no setup, no cost, no live targets. Just you and a terminal.
The SOC mission
Where this is all heading: a security operations centre that protects the small and mid-sized Canadian businesses enterprise security forgot.
03 Hands-on // Challenges
Pick a flag. Pop a shell. Learn by doing.
Free challenges from beginner to intermediate. Run them in a sandboxed terminal in your browser, or on trusted practice ranges — always legal, always ethics-first, never against live systems.
$ ssh recruit@range
[ok] sandbox ready
› find the flag
[ok] sandbox ready
› find the flag
Beginner · Terminal
Linux Basics: First Flag
Get comfortable on the command line and capture your very first flag in a safe sandbox.
Open challenge →$ curl -I target
200 OK
› read the response
200 OK
› read the response
Beginner · Web
Web Recon 101
Learn to read what a web server quietly tells you — and spot what it was never meant to.
Open challenge →$ tail -f auth.log
[alert] 40x failed login
› triage the incident
[alert] 40x failed login
› triage the incident
Intermediate · SOC
Blue Team: Log Triage
Take the SOC analyst's seat: read the logs, spot the attack in the noise, and call the incident.
Open challenge →
04 The drill // How it works
From zero to flag in four steps.
No install and no account to get started — pick one and go.
STEP 01
Pick a challenge
Choose by level and topic — Linux, web, or blue-team SOC.
SELECTSTEP 02
Launch the shell
Open a sandboxed terminal in your browser, or a trusted practice box.
IN BROWSERSTEP 03
Capture the flag
Work the problem, find the flag, and submit it.
SOLVESTEP 04
Read the writeup
Compare your approach with the full writeup and level up.
LEVEL UP
05 Projects // Open on GitHub
Everything I build is public.
Labs, scripts, and writeups — Python and Ansible automation, Windows and Linux security labs, each one documented with a readme you can actually follow and fork.
Latest Windows & Linux security labs · updated regularly
06 For business // The mission
A SOC built for Canadian small business.
A SOC — a security operations centre — is a team that watches your systems around the clock to catch and shut down cyberattacks. Big companies have had them for years. I'm building one sized and priced for the small and mid-sized Canadian businesses that have been priced out of it.
- ✓Right-sized for SMBsSerious monitoring without the enterprise price tag or the enterprise complexity.
- ✓Canadian and localYour data and your support stay here in Canada.
- ✓Watch, detect, respondRound-the-clock eyes on your systems, with a real response when something's wrong.
- ✓Plain-language reportingNo jargon — clear answers about what's happening and what to do next.