About

Computer science student in the engineering cycle at ESI Sidi Bel Abbès, focused on offensive security and penetration testing. I spend most of my time on Hack The Box and CTFs, and I'm working toward moving from pentesting fundamentals into exploit development and vulnerability research.

Focus

I work through Hack The Box machines end-to-end — recon, exploitation, and privilege escalation — and compete in CTFs across a mix of categories. Recent boxes have included a PrivateBin LFI on Kobold, an MCPJam RCE on DevHub, a Mirth Connect auth bypass, and a cloud-native target on Nimbus (AWS/LocalStack).

Writeups

Machine and challenge writeups go up on this site, Medium and GitHub.

Competitions

Numidian CTF v1.0 June 2026

  • Finished 7th overall; 3 challenges solved (2× OSINT, 1× Misc).
  • Reached 10/12 stages of a multi-part forensics challenge.

IngeHack 5.0 CTF April 2026

  • Competed solving Misc challenges covering scripting/automation and OSINT.

Etcode Programming Competition 2025

  • Competed in a team on algorithmic and time-constrained problem-solving tasks.

Alphabit CTF, breachlab.io & picoCTF

  • Web exploitation (XSS, SQLi, command injection, prototype pollution), cryptography (RSA, Vigenère), forensics (PCAP, ARP covert channels, steganography), shellcoding, and OSINT.

Currently learning

Working through the Red Team Leaders course on malware development and EDR evasion.

Skills

Languages

Python3, Java, C, C++, Bash

Security tools

Burp Suite, Nmap, Wireshark, Metasploit, Hashcat, Volatility

Systems

Linux (Parrot OS), Windows

Hardware & embedded

ESP32, Arduino, C++

Education

Engineering — Computer Science 2024–Present

  • ESI-SBA, Sidi Bel Abbès. Coursework: Java OOP, mathematical logic, probability & statistics, optics, mathematical analysis.

Baccalauréat 2023–2024

  • Score: 17.72/20.

Elsewhere

Contact

  • Email: seifarselan@gmail.com
  • Location: Constantine, Algeria
  • Languages: Arabic (native), English (fluent), French (working proficiency)