A stronger result than I expected.
In 2026, my first ethical hacking competition ended far better than I expected: I found one high-severity issue and two medium-severity issues, finishing in 8th place out of 773 researchers who took part in the competition.
Learning how systems break.
This area reflects a growing interest in offensive security, reverse engineering, protocols, and the practical side of understanding how complex systems behave under stress.
Even though my first competition ended with a stronger result than I expected, I see it much more as a starting point than an arrival. The real goal is to keep improving, sharpen my thinking, and develop better judgment around how vulnerabilities appear, how they can be exploited, and how they should be communicated.
I have already taken part in another competition as well, and the results for that one are still pending. For me, that ongoing process matters as much as any placement: competing, reviewing findings, learning from mistakes, and getting better with every round.
What interests me most is not only finding issues, but building the kind of technical depth and discipline that turns curiosity into real security intuition over time.