I'm studying Computer Science for a very simple reason. I'm interested in how computers work and how they are used. I find the design of complex systems, such as the internet and operating systems, to be as fascinating as the processes that they facilitate and the people who use them.
As a result my interests include, but are not limited to:
In the most nascent days of my Cybersecurity career, during high school, I'd spend my free time reading through the official nmap book, interesting in learning what I could about basic networking and network scanning.
I very quickly noticed the "Xmas Scan", wherein the scanner abuses a trick implied by the TCP RFC. Basically, if you send a packet to a port over TCP without SYN, RST, or ACK bits sent, you should recieve a RST packet in response so that you know something got messed up. Barring scanning, this behavior is most common when connections are choppy or drop in the middle of sending a packet.
What matters, however, is that I found it to be a novel way to approach port scanning which taught me quite a bit about the way packets are constructed. It was what I would consider the true beginning of my formal interest in the field and it is what inspired my ongoing interest in pursuing a career within it.
I chose to name my Github account after the scan because it remains a cool thing to tell people about, and it reminds me why I do what I do everytime I make a commit or merge a pull request!