I’m especially upset because this was a job in local government, a unique opportunity to work as a security analyst without the issues surrounding mass surveillance. At a time when civil society is under attack from the right, I seem to have taken a surprise left.
I suspect the underlying reason was twofold:
1.) I asked that my supervisor not scream or hit things during meetings. 2.) I noticed a security issue with the systems I was overseeing, and began to write a custom SIEM rule to detect it. (Going to be vague on the second point).
The folks I’d have asked for advice in the past, like Sean “Vilerat” Smith (who suggested academia for a young man disillusioned with mass surveillance but wanting to participate in civil society) or Dan Kaminski (who kindly found me some fellow newbies to hang with at Defcon 17 and corresponded with me off and on until his death) and Kelly “Aloria” Lum (who kindly gave me advice on ways to build up skills when I ran out of money for OSCP extensions)… are dead.
I have taken steps like contacting an attorney, placing a litigation hold, filing a “charge of discrimination” with the appropriate agency, requesting the filing of criminal charges against a manager who made physical contact with me, and making a detailed report to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the response to my attempts to secure the network… but reinstatement is rare, and even if I receive a windfall from this, in the short term I have a resumé gap that’s hard to explain given that it’s frowned upon to speak ill of former employers.
This actually has been a pattern for me – for a spell, I worked as a public interest technologist, but moved back home to help care for a family member with Alzheimers and do some certifications in 2016.
It was a scary time – the local police refused to do anything when I alerted them that my father would often block me in a room while holding a handgun and ranting. At one point he smashed my laptop, which led to me being unable to study for OSCP, and I could not afford lab extensions... So I took the first role I could get that would get me out of the house… and was promptly laid off as COVID fell due to it being a high travel consulting position.
When I recited the above to my state rep and questioned whether I should extend my job hunt internationally, they encouraged me to apply for a local government position… where my manager exhibited many of the same behaviors my father (who’d worked for the same agency) engaged in, though admittedly minus the handgun.
I have some penetration testing experience from the role prior to this one, knowledge of SIEM technologies like Microsoft Sentinel, a unique perspective on geopolitics stemming from my previous life as a censorship circumvention researcher, and have a knowledge of basic statistics from my aborted doctorate.
Since this is HN: I’m open to working for a startup, but it’s my understanding early stage companies aren’t looking for SIEM analysts with aborted PhDs, they want hardcore coders or more MBA types who know about the business side of things. (Big thanks to our creator for a proper Slashdot replacement BTW)
In the past I have always tried to remember what drew me into the hacking community, and returned several times to Defcon and do what Dan Kaminski did for me… greet the newbies, show them where they can find a chill party and cheap food (<3 Stage Door), but I cannot afford to fly out to Nevada to network in person given this setback.
Apologies for the wall of text, it can be hard to tell sometimes how much context is too much or too little -- if anyone has advice on where to look for work, I’d really appreciate any advice that folks feel comfortable giving here in the comments, and if you drop an email, I will happily reach out to you 1:1.