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With 2021 ending today, I want to casually look back on what I did in the second half of the year and write down my goals for next year.
You can find my look back at the first half of the year here (for some reason I wrote it on 5/31).
Table of Contents
My goals for 2021
Looking back, these were the goals I had set for myself on January 1, 2021.
- Develop my own Raspberry Pi OS
- Become able to solve reversing challenges in CTFs
- Reach light blue in AtCoder
- Reach HackTheBox ProHacker
- Update my blog seriously
- Write a technical doujin book
- Make OSS commits
- Obtain CISSP / PenTest+
- Obtain higher-level Azure certifications
- Become a little better at Rust and CThese were the areas I especially wanted to focus on as of my 5/31 retrospective.
- Reach light blue in AtCoder
- Become able to solve Rev/Crypto/Pwn
- Take the TOEIC
- Bug huntingLooking at this again, I really did not do much of it at all!
What I achieved
I had already achieved the following goals by the first half of the year.
- Reach HackTheBox ProHacker
- Update my blog seriously
- Write a technical doujin book
- Make OSS commitsAs an update, the YARA book that I distributed at Tech Book Fest was published on 11/5 from Impress R&D’s Gijutsu no Izumi series as ”A Gentle Introduction to YARA.”
You can buy it on Amazon and elsewhere.
I have hardly made any OSS commits since writing the YARA book, so in 2022 I would like to keep contributing continuously to some repository again.
Also, although I did not reach my light-blue goal, I reached green in AtCoder on 10/2.
Since reaching green, I have mostly been doing CTFs and have not entered contests, so it feels like I have effectively retired.
Doing competitive programming was very helpful for learning basic algorithms and data structures.
Beyond that, I actively kept busy: I provided CTF problems to a certain contest, obtained AWS SAA, wrote investigation articles about WinDbg, and participated in weekly contests while writing write-ups.
What I did not achieve
As for reversing challenges, I have gotten to the point where I can consistently fully solve beginner-friendly CTFs.
However, I got zero solves at SECCON, and even in public CTFs I often cannot solve the more difficult problems, so I want to keep improving.
My main goal next year will probably be reverse engineering.
What I did not even start
As for TOEIC and bug hunting, I did not work on them at all because of a lack of motivation.
I have been reading English technical books little by little this year, but since it takes me a very long time to read even one page, I want to study English properly in 2022.
For bug hunting, I am thinking that if I come across an interesting topic while doing CTFs or reverse engineering, I will give it a try.
Also, for CISSP, I only did a few past questions and made almost no progress.
Recently one of my coworkers got CISSP and it made me panic a little, so I am thinking of working hard to get it in 2022.
My goals for 2022
It looks like I will be doing a new job in 2022, so my direction may shift quite a bit, but I am thinking of setting the following as goals.
- Become able to solve SECCON finals-level reversing challenges
- Write a technical book related to WinDbg or reverse engineering
- Learn Windows programming (kernel drivers / WinAPI)
- Obtain CISSP / achieve a TOEIC score of 800
- Study Pwn / Crypto
- OSS development / contributionEach of these is fairly heavy, so there are not many of them as goals, but I want to work hard so that I can accomplish them.
Recently I have felt somewhat stagnant in reverse engineering, so I am thinking I might try to find a strong mentor.
For OSS activity, I want to continue contributing to YARA and perhaps also try making my own Ghidra extension.
Also, for CTFs, around October 2021 I formed a training team called 0neP@dding, and we participate in whatever contest looks interesting each week and write write-ups, so I plan to continue that in 2022.
0neP@dding currently has two main members and one guest member, and we are especially looking for people who want to handle Pwn and Crypto, so feel free to contact me if you are interested.
I did not list them explicitly as goals, but I also have strong interest in things like honeypot operation, malware analysis, and bug hunting, so I want to keep working on those as well.
Summary
This was a fairly rough look back at 2021 and my goals for 2022.
It seems like 2022 will bring major changes in daily life and keep me busy, but I want to continue improving.
It will be my fourth year as an IT engineer, so I also feel like it is about time to start doing work with a larger social impact.