Raj Patel

- Completed an intensive 24-day hands-on cybersecurity challenge focused on real-world offensive, defensive, and forensic security scenarios, simulating tasks performed by SOC analysts, application security engineers, and junior penetration testers. - Practiced web application security testing by identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities such as IDOR, SQL Injection, Stored XSS, race conditions, and business logic flaws in controlled lab environments. - Conducted SOC-style investigations, including alert triage, web log analysis, C2 traffic detection, and phishing campaign identification to understand attacker behavior and detection strategies. - Applied digital forensics techniques to analyze registry artifacts, attack timelines, and compromised systems, improving incident response and root-cause analysis skills. - Gained hands-on exposure to malware analysis fundamentals, obfuscation techniques, and YARA rule creation for threat detection. - Worked with modern security tooling such as Splunk, CyberChef, and Linux-based investigation utilities to decode, correlate, and analyze security data. - Explored cloud and container security concepts, including AWS misconfigurations, container escape scenarios, and modern attack surfaces in DevSecOps environments. - Strengthened foundational skills in Linux CLI, network discovery, and security automation concepts, reinforcing a practical, attacker-aware defensive mindset.

- Collaborated closely with backend and engineering teams to assess, audit, and strengthen the security posture of the organization’s primary web application. - Identified and analyzed critical architectural and application-layer vulnerabilities, including SQL Injection and Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and worked directly with developers to refactor insecure code patterns into secure, maintainable implementations. - Performed systematic API security testing to validate authentication, authorization, and data integrity controls, ensuring resilience against unauthorized access and abuse during high-traffic usage. - Assisted in bridging the gap between security best practices and real-world code implementation, contributing to long-term security improvements rather than short-term fixes. - Authored clear technical documentation, remediation guidelines, and secure coding recommendations, enabling the team to adopt secure-by-design development standards across future releases. - Contributed to a measurable reduction in reported vulnerabilities by supporting the adoption of improved validation, sanitization, and defensive coding practices.