Hey there! I work in offensive cybersecurity. In my spare time, I work on the defensive side, focusing on the nexus between {cyber,info}security and human rights. I've been doing this kind of thing for over twenty years. I'm self taught (well, standing on the shoulders of giants.) No certs, no university degree, nothing of that sort.

If you're looking for local communities that hold local events, take a look at the "Hackers N Hops" and TechYeet groups:

Hackers N Hops: https://www.hackersnhops.com/ TechYeet: https://www.techyeet.org/

The projects I work most on in my spare time:

    HardenedBSD (a soft fork of FreeBSD that re-implements the grsecurity/pax patchset for linux with an eye towards human rights): https://hardenedbsd.org/

    libhijack (open source post-exploitation tool for runtime process infection on FreeBSD): https://radicle.network/nodes/rad.hardenedbsd.org/libhijack

Let me know if you have any questions. I'm actually looking for help with HardenedBSD. In addition to contributing back to those who have given so much to us, contributing patches and/or documentation to open source projects really helps boost your resume/CV.