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If it wasn't blatently obvious from the domain name or the constant presence of my name, I am Howard Zhu. I'm a computer science major from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) pursing a minor in Music Industry. You might think that's a weird combo and you know what? It is, but it'll make sense later.
I honestly don't remember why I became interested in computer science. Maybe it was because my dad is a software engineer who always had computer hardware kicking around, or maybe it was my love for gaming led me to gradually build up knowledge about computers. Whatever it was, we're here now.
My earliest memories of getting into computers was during the "Golden Days" of YouTube. Back when Minecraft was the biggest game out there and the big content creators like Captain Sparkles, SSundee, and JeromeASF were making videos on it. My friends all had copies of it and I desparately wanted a copy for myself. Back then, I wasn't allowed to purchase video games of any kind and was stuck with free to play games like Club Penguin (Rest in Peace) and Roblox. When I finally got a copy for my birthday from a friend, I got hooked. I spent countless hours with friends playing on servers and talking through the our landline (jeez I'm not that old right?).
Here is where I consider the start of it all. I got tired of playing the same old servers again and again and wanted to try mods. Pouring over countless websites and YouTube tutorials, I got familiar with the file system and how the game files worked. Being a rebellious kid in middle school, I wanted to play Minecraft wherever I went. I tried to install it on school computers but was thwarted by my lack of admin priviledges. So I installed it onto a flash drive instead. To my surprise it worked and I shared the technique with all my friends. Soon enough we were having lan parties in class during free time. What a rabbit hole I would dive into after that...
Ah YouTube, the great educator. The place where you can find everything you want to know about almost anything. To no one's surprise, I started watching tech videos reviewing computers, how to build computers, and how to tune computers. I give most of the credit to Linus Tech Tips for giving me the foundation of what I needed to build my own computer
And with custom hardware comes custom problems.
I built my PC back in early high school with decently high end parts. It was wonderful, boot times were instant relative to my poor old laptop with a spinning drive. As I installed more games, more random bits of software, and applied random work arounds from the internet, I got pretty familiar with troubleshooting tech.
My high school offered a cybersecurity class through the regional occupational program in town which I took and gained an incredible amount of knowledge. I learned basic computer networking principles, common hacking techniques, and even how to crimp my own RJ-45 cables. The class followed the CompTIA A+ certification and it wasn't until my first year of college where I decided to take the test and passed. That's besides the point. The point was that I was that my horizons were broadened beyond my wildest dreams. There are so many components in today's internet and operating systems that I don't think I could ever hope to learn everything about it. It made me realize that I had only scratched the surface of it all.
The teacher of said cybersecurity class also had an afterschool club. This club primarly focused on preparing and competing in the CyberPatriot competitions whose main focus was patching security vulnerabilities in operating systems. I joined my freshman year and left when I graduated. Needless to say, I got very comfortable with windows and linux.
My main linux distro of choice is Ubuntu. That's what the competitions used so that's what I learned. Eventually I got around to dual booting my laptop with Ubuntu and later Kali Linux. Kali Linux was my introduction into real world "hacking" where I could tinker with well documented hacking toys at home. I tried basic wireless password attacks and some OSINT tools, but didn't get very far past that. Regardless I gained a bunch of in depth knowledge in networking.
Right now as I write this post, it's a snapshot of my current knowledge. As I continue to develop this website and add more and more things, this section will slowly go out of date. At the time of writing, I'm in university studying computer science and for hobbies, I chose to start my own home lab. I've learned more in a quarter at UCLA than I ever did in high school. It truely is a lot and I hope to be able to share it with anyone curious enough and daring enough to read the rest of my junk.
But this is where I'll leave off for now. The results of my findings are to follow.