Section 0: Pre-Course Banter

Posted on Aug 12, 2023

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for the video version of this chapter

Threat hunting is not typically viewed as an “entry-level” cybersecurity discipline, probably because it is a layer of abstraction woven from other, more fundamental, layers of abstraction. It is not a house built from bricks, but a neighborhood built from houses.

I have however created this course specifically with the beginner in mind. What that practically entails is that I do my best to not indulge in pedantry while providing sufficient information that allows you to follow along not only with what we are doing, but crucially, why we are doing it.

I am a huge believer in this approach to learning outlined above by the wonderful Andrej Karpathy. This course is built on this approach - instead of mastering every single foundational discipline that converge as threat hunting, we will be learning on-demand. That’s to say we’ll start with the final application, and then work our way back to understand how it connects to its foundational knowledge. This way the fat is trimmed - we’ll learn what we need, when we need, to understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.

All this to say - if you are beginner and you are curious about threat hunting then you are in the right place. I can promise that if you venture along, by the end of our journey many so-called “advanced” topics will appear in a whole new light. Since one only truly begins a journey of understanding when going from the idea phase to the experience phase, we might as well start there.

Finally I do want to add that I myself am an eternal student and always learning. As this course (hopefully) may play some role in your journey of understanding, so of course it has played such a role in my own. As such it’s highly likely I will make mistakes.

Mistakes themselves of course represent the potential for further understanding - but only if we become aware of them. So if there’s anything here you are unsure about, or simply flat-out disagree with please feel free to reach out and share this with me so that everyone can potentially benefit. You can connect with me on Twitter, or feel free to email me.

 


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