Kimmo Virtanen
Network engineer, home lab and cybersecurity enthusiastic
What do I do?
I have experience working in IT for many years and in many different roles. Security is one of the aspects that has always been the most interesting to me.
Networks
Routers, switches and firewalls. HPE, Cisco and FortiNet. I have experience configuring and deploying network equipment in a big business network, designing remote site networks and setting them up from the scratch
Blue & red team
Defending at work, attacking at home. I practice the offensive side at home through TryHackMe, Hackthebox and having my own Active Directory homelab to play around. My roles have included mostly blue team side, but I am hoping get to experience the other side one day for work
Home lab
If you are looking for someone who has a deep desire to learn and try new things, I am here. Always have something in the pipeline (and in my own project management spreadsheet). I love to build and break new things to see how the technology works
Thing or two about me
I have been interested in technology and computers since young age, it probably all started when I was four years old and got my first console, NES. Interest in games was pretty natural way to me get interested in computers and overall technology. My first game that I hacked was Halo for PC, and while the “hack” was nothing spectacular (changing values in a hex editor to change values to enable content or change ammo type), I think that was my “woah, this is possible?” moment.
Cyber security has a similar feeling like in a tower defense game; you build your defenses and hope to stop the attackers from reaching your core. You need to keep up developing your tech & knowledge and update existing infrastructure while implementing new tactics and adjusting to different forms of attacks constantly.
At the moment I am focusing on learning scripting/coding by studying Python and getting shells on TryHackMe and Hackthebox. I do have a tendency to shift my focus back and forth from those to building something in my home lab whenever I come across an interesting project.
I am also interested in digital privacy and advocate/support honest and secure FOSS applications. I attend and volunteer in local community events regularly like OWASP London, Bsides London and smaller events like Beacon. If you need a help organising, building/planning the event or volunteers on the actual day of the event, please do not hesitate to contact me
Skills & My Experience
Cloud
Joining a SaaS company that provides a telecommunication solutions was a step for me to go and learn more about the cloud. I have learned a lot about telecommunication, the protocols such as SIP, WebRTC and applications and services that I would probably have never had chance to encounter otherwise.
Network engineering
Working in a big corporation taught me a lot of about networking equipment, protocols and routing. I have been in the centre of troubleshooting a difficult wireless network problems and routing problems that affected multiple international sites. I have had chance to do some small scale threat hunting, learn to read different logs around the infrastructure and analyse PCAPs to see how the traffic flows, and why there might have been an issue.
IT Service Desk Analyst
My time working in service desk made me understand Active Directory and Identity Access Management way better than I could have thought. The mixture of on-premise equipment and having a company slowly move to the cloud was an interesting experience.
I got to use a major idP service along with AD, help with migrating on-premises servers to the cloud and get experience from many other applications and services.
Technical Support Specialist
Multiple different roles that all taught me a lot about different systems and process and definitely about different customers and people. Working in a different parts of the world has given me a lot of insight how different teams and cultures work. The most valuable soft skills were during these times.
Home Projects & Hobbies
My plan is to do a complete write-ups one day and add walkthroughs for the TryHackMe and HackTheBox boxes that I have solved. For now this only serves as a vague list of things that I have been working on. There are many projects that I have since decommissioned from my home lab to make room for new things.
Networking related
OPNSense and pfSense firewall with IPSec tunnels
Network VLAN segmentation
DNS over TLS configuration
OpenVPN and WireGuard configuration to access local home network safely
Cybersecurity related
Active Directory laboratory
Elasticsearch for Active Directory lab and self-hosted servers
Nessus Scanner for vulnerability assessing home servers and to scan for vulnerabilities in attack simulation
Vulnerable Windows and Linux servers to test vulnerabilities and exploits in a safe environment
Infrastructure
Proxmox Hypervisor with multiple VMs for different purposes
Self-hosted Nextcloud personal cloud instance
NAS Server
Automation scripts for different purposes