Which edition are you

Twenty questions about how you work, not about the product. They fit you whether you do this for a living or for the love of it: what counts is the habits, not the job title. At the end you see how far you lean towards each edition, and which one is yours. Your answers stay in your browser: we never receive them and we never store them.

Question 1 of 20

Faced with a new system, the first thing you look for is the way in.

Full red. You find the way before someone looks for it with other intentions.

You do not have to get in to be useful: half the trades here look from the other side.

Question 2 of 20

You spend more time reading logs than running tools.

It is the least celebrated and most decisive part of the work: noticing.

Then your time goes elsewhere, and the quiz is already working out where.

Question 3 of 20

You have opened a program to see what it really does, instead of believing the documentation.

Terminal green. Where the other editions use the tools, yours opens them.

Almost no trade requires taking things apart, and those who do usually do it for everyone else.

Question 4 of 20

After running an attack you go and check what trace it left on the other side.

Purple. Red and blue not mixed out of laziness, but correlated.

Either you trust the result, or checking it is not your job: two different situations, and we separate them further on.

Question 5 of 20

When you find something, you write it down so that somebody else can reproduce it.

Half the offensive trade is exactly this: if it cannot be done again by following your lines, it is not a finding yet.

Then your result is measured on the machine, and your memory does the filing.

Question 6 of 20

It bothers you to find software on your machine that you did not choose.

That is the purist's objection, and it is a fair one: two hundred unasked programs are two hundred things to keep updated.

Then a ready-made box does not weigh on you, and we can look at the trade instead.

Question 7 of 20

You have found a security service that was installed but switched off.

A service installed and switched off looks exactly like one that is protecting you. That is why the defences here arrive already on.

Either you have a method, or you have not yet gone to look.

Question 8 of 20

An alert you cannot explain keeps you awake more than a door left open.

Blue. The difference is made by whoever can tell the noise from the signal.

Then you live well with uncertainty, or somebody else watches the noise.

Question 9 of 20

You have written at least one tool of your own because the existing ones did not do what you needed.

People who write their own tools usually want to open other people's too.

Most of the work is done with what exists, when it is configured properly.

Question 10 of 20

You measure a defence by trying to break it, not by reading the configuration.

It is the only honest measure, and it asks you to stand on both sides.

Reading the configuration is faster. It holds until somebody actually tries.

Question 11 of 20

You are more interested in how a thing is made than in making it work.

That is the curiosity that leads to taking things apart: at work it is a rare and inconvenient virtue.

Your measure is the service that runs, which is the measure of whoever keeps the infrastructure going.

Question 12 of 20

You choose your own tools, but you would happily hand over the upkeep of the defences.

That is the promise of the orange edition: a clean base, the defences already armed, the rest is yours to add.

You want control over everything, and there are editions that give you the posture without taking your hand off the wheel.

Question 13 of 20

You have got access by working on a person instead of a machine.

The shortest way in almost always goes through someone in a hurry or someone who trusts you. That is red as well, and often the red that works best.

Some people never try on principle, others have simply never thought of it: two different things, and further on it becomes clear which.

Question 14 of 20

When something goes wrong, the first thing you build is a timeline.

The when first, the why after. Start from the why and you usually find the explanation you were expecting.

Then you go by instinct, and sometimes instinct is faster. It holds as long as there is only one incident.

Question 15 of 20

You have looked inside a file format nobody had documented.

That is the move that separates using a program from understanding it.

A documented format is enough for almost everything, and whoever opens the others usually does it for everybody.

Question 16 of 20

You built your own install procedure because the ready-made ones did not convince you.

You want to know what is on the machine because you put it there. It is the purist's objection, applied to the first minute of the system's life.

You start from what is there and adjust afterwards, which is how most competent people work.

Question 17 of 20

When you find a hole, the first thing you think about is how anyone would notice it.

Full purple. An attack that teaches the defending side nothing is half a job.

You think about the hole, and that is fine: it is already more than almost anyone does.

Question 18 of 20

Before touching anything you look around: who built it, which version it is, what people say about it.

Reconnaissance is the part of the trade that shows the least and pays the most.

You go straight in. It works often, and the times it does not are expensive.

Question 19 of 20

You could say, without going to look, what your machine did last night.

People who keep an eye on their own machine usually keep one on everybody else's too.

Like almost everyone. What counts is the day you need to know.

Question 20 of 20

You have rebuilt from scratch something that already worked, just to understand why it worked.

It is the slowest and soundest way to learn, and nobody ever asks anyone to do it.

If it works, it works: a defensible position, and it saves a great deal of time.