Benjamin Spoolstra

A hardened Kali Linux VPS built from scratch as a dedicated remote platform for bug bounty hunting, penetration testing, and CTFs.

A cloud-based SOC built from scratch in Azure with Terraform with an attacker VM, a misconfigured victim VM, and a Wazuh 4.14 SIEM, which are all used to run a full attack-and-detect cycle with custom detection rules mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

I built a cloud-based GRC lab executing the full NIST RMF lifecycle against an Active Directory domain hosted in Azure. I ran a baseline scan using Nessus and the SCAP Security Compliance Checker (SCC) to enumerate existing vulnerabilities and then hardened the domain with the PowerSTIG utility and manual GPO hardening. Finally, I mapped each control applied to the NIST 800-171 and CMMC 2.0 Level 2 controls.

An OWASP Juice Shop web exploitation challenge where a player must forge arbitrary discount coupons by reverse-engineering a z85-encoded coupon structure.

A CyLab Academy CTF challenge where a stack buffer overflow vulnerability gates a flag behind 13 questions about the executable's structure and mitigations. It can be solved by static analysis with file, checksec, and nm utilities in Linux.

A series of Linux command line challenges with 34 levels in total. Challenges cover Linux fundamentals, from file system navigation and data encodings to networking, SSH keys, cron-based privilege escalation, and git forensics.

This challenge is a set of 7 levels in Lakera's AI Gandalf chatbot, which is designed to never reveal a password. Each level gets progressively harder with more safeguards put in place. The goal is to bypass the safeguards and retrieve the hidden password using any means necessary.

CloudGoat, CyLab Academy, GOAD, Lakera AI, OWASP Juice Shop, OverTheWire

TryHackMe, HackTheBox, PortSwigger, HackSmarter

Curated tooling and references by category

Everything used to pass Sec+, CySA+, PenTest+, and more

Hub for all cybersecurity career resources

Collection of tools and cheat sheets for red teaming engagements