Leron Gray - From Navy E6 to Pentester, SANS Mentor and Nerdcore Rapper!

Getting Into Infosec

Leron Gray is a man of many talents. Although he didn't really get into infosec until much later in life, he always had a creative side. He now finds himself as a pentester working from home and a nerdcore rapper producing amazing beats!

BIO

Leron is a penetration tester and a ten-year Navy veteran with four years of experience as a Cryptologic Technician (Networks), focusing primarily on offensive cyber operations. He holds a Bachelor's degree from Dakota State University in Cyber Operations. With a passion for Python, he loves automating tedious daily routine tasks for efficiency and considers himself to always be in a position to learn more and pass on knowledge. He always enjoys competing in as many Capture-the-Flag events as possible and also often performs as a nerdcore rapper.

Leron currently holds eCPPT, eWPT, GPYC, GPEN, GAWN, GCFE, and GICSP certifications. He also maintains a blog and maintains an active Twitter discussing music, information security, and wrestling.

Notes

• Went to a high school that made you choose majors

• Grew up poor, was not allowed to go out much

• Technological learning came from school

• Didn't really get into computers until he was 25

• Has been in music since Jr. High School (Marching band, jazz band, and concert band... all the bands)

• Networking is the biggest thing that Leron says would help

• Leron offers his passionate opinion on "aptitude" (it's a pet peeve of his)

Quotes

• "I learned a lot... I made sure not to waste any opportunity for learning."

• "Job searching, in general, is a pain."

• "I don't think I would be where I am right now if I hadn't gone out and made that effort."

• "One of the big deals that people had were degrees. I wasn't really sure why; I have 10 years of IT/Cyber experience."

• "It turned out the company no longer owned that server. Their DNS was still pointing to it though."

• "I took Java in high school and was really bad at it and I found out everyone is bad at Java, so it doesn't really matter."

• "It's so much easier to learn when you have a problem to fix."

• "It's not even just information security that learning Python could help... it could be anything you do... often enough to warrant not to do it [manually]."

• "Nobody does a CTF and expects not to learn something by the time they leave."

• "Job searches shouldn't be like that: they should be based on your merit."

• "Maybe the person can't get OSCP, but maybe they have the skills or knowledge."

• "The idea of aptitude... raises too many borders."

Links

• Leron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mcohmi

• Leron's Blog: https://daddycocoaman.dev/

• Leron's GitHub: https://github.com/daddycocoaman

• Class that Leron Is Mentoring: https://www.sans.org/mentor/class/sec573-seattle-19mar2019-leron-gray

• Visual Studio Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/

• PyCharm: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/

• IPython Notebook: https://ipython.org/notebook.html

• San Antonio's Hackers Association: https://satxhackers.org/wp/

• MC OHM-I: https://www.mcohmi.com

• Intro Music: Cascadia by Trash80 - https://trash80.com/#/content/133/weeklybeats-2012-week5 (Released under Creative Commons)
• Outro Music: https://soundcloud.com/mc-ohm-i/domain

Getting Into Infosec

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/coffeewithayman

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg6gV_gdfc188HZdN8LUx4A

• Book: https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Step-Step-Starting-Information-ebook/dp/B07N15GTPC/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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