About Me
My name is Manny Berrueta (@ManuelBerrueta). I am security software engineer/hacker in an offensive security journey who has been playing with computers and electronics since a very young age and continue to be very fascinated by these things! I have built my own machines over the years and taken plenty of things apart, sometimes just to see what makes them tick.
I started programming in QBasic with an old toaster, then I moved up to Visual Basic and learned to do some silly things with AOL which I had the privilege to access with my very robust 56K US Robotics dial-up modem (miss the sounds sometimes…).
My curiosity led me to start tinkering with “security”, even more so after watching the movie Hackers (I know, I know!). I spent a lot of time trying to find how to do cool things like finding flaws, excuse me, I mean “unwanted features” and how to take advantage of and use these newfound features :). I also enjoyed playing with servers, hex editing (especially in games :)), and I may have tried something called War dialing, but cannot confirm =)
After a few life detours, including serving in the Marine Corps, I finished my Computer Science degree and you can still find me programming, but now in C, C++, Python and Go (among others that works throws my way). While pursuing my degree I also managed to hack myself into a scholarship to the SANS Institute’s via their Cyber FastTrack program (Cyber FastTrack Finalists) to earn my first 3 security certifications!
I continue to feed my curiosity (lifelong noob, always learning!) with my work in security where I get to do fun things (at least fun to me :)). My work so far has led me to do a diverse number of things including but not limited to security testing (think of looking for “unwanted features”), attack surface analysis, vulnerability assessments, threat modeling, reverse engineering, exploit development, fuzzing, hardware testing, tool development and security software to manage your nodes.
For fun I like to check out CTF’s, security research, tinker with electronics, read books, make my toys go faster, enjoying the great outdoors with my family like going off road with the ATVs, fishing, and boating.
Last but not least I am very passionate about security and for me it’s not just a job, but a mindset, and part of my life. I live and breathe it, and I take pride in that what I do helps improve the security of the products that people around the world use every day for both personal and business.
