{"id":20,"date":"2026-10-02T18:55:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T18:55:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/?p=20"},"modified":"2026-10-03T04:38:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T04:38:39","slug":"the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/?p=20","title":{"rendered":"The beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

$25 dollar Laptop<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My path to cybersecurity has certainly been a strange one. Hard lessons from weak security practices and a fleeting attention to my projects left the door wide open for exploitation. The first thing to come under attack was my eBay account. I had let my web browser store my passwords, didn’t have two-factor authentication enabled, and was in absolute disbelief when it happened. I remember seeing the email from eBay and assuming it had to be a phishing attack, not realizing it was a legitimate notification that I had just bought gaming cards. That experience forced my hand into learning more about cybersecurity, ultimately inspiring me to pursue a career in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My hardware journey picked up when my neighbor handed me a broken 2014 Toshiba Satellite laptop. It took some time before I got around to troubleshooting it, but I eventually discovered that the power rail on the start button was pulling low voltage\u2014about 1.1 volts. Since it was supposed to be 3.3 volts, I knew there had to be a short on the board. I figured that for a laptop of that age, there should be plenty of scrap machines online to harvest parts from. Strangely enough, the sellers of the few cheap scrap laptops I did find ended up refunding my money. Maybe they figured they would never sell them and had lost track of their inventory, though I don’t know for sure. I pivoted and ended up buying newer, even cheaper 2017 Toshiba models instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was much more successful with that strategy. The first 2017 model was an easy fix; I installed a spare hard drive and RAM I already owned, securing them with some random laptop screws I had lying around the office. Once it was working, I gave that one to my neighbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second laptop arrived just as bare-bones. On this $25 machine, I installed Fedora Linux, which is actively supported by a strong computing community. I now use it to connect to my other office laptop that hosts this WordPress blog\u2014an entire setup supported by repurposed legacy hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence helps me complete complex tasks in seconds. Yet, as the evolving threat landscape puts me and others like me at risk, I often lie awake eager to learn and do more to protect the simple circuits in my little island in cyberspace. Let the journey begin here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

$25 dollar Laptop My path to cybersecurity has certainly been a strange one. Hard lessons from weak security practices and a fleeting attention to my projects left the door wide open for exploitation. The first thing to come under attack was my eBay account. I had let my web browser store my passwords, didn’t have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jdweb.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}