MonkeHacks #62

Sunshine, Star Wars, NahamCon

Author

Monke
May 04, 2025

MonkeHacks #62

Welcome to the 62nd edition of MonkeHacks. I’m back in Ireland now, and flying back to Edinburgh on Monday. I gave a talk titled “Bug Bounty for College Students” to TU Dublin on Tuesday - thank you TUD for inviting me to give that talk, and thanks to Bugcrowd as well for sponsoring it.

The weather has been amazing this week, with nice summer breezes and sunshine, so I’ve been allowing myself some time to unwind in the park near my parents’ house. My family have travelled up to Northern Ireland to take part in the Irish Orienteering Championships, so it’s just me at home at the moment. I saw Revenge of the Sith in the cinema with my friends from university - it’s the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith this year, which is why it’s back on the big screen.

I was very busy in the latter half of the week working on a project of mine I can’t share yet, but is relevant to my NahamCon talk. More on that below.

Good weather in Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork, Ireland

Weekly Ideas / Notes 

  • Thanks rez0 for reposting this - I felt that it was worth sharing here. In short: a lot of games that are glamorised by society aren’t actually worth winning at all. So many of us live life with our heads down, never looking up around us to see where we actually are, and what the hell is actually happening. Is the road you’re taking going to lead to a place that you want to be in? Or are you simply being swept along with the crowd? It’s not like working 60 hours a week is inherently bad - but rather, are you working those 60 hours towards a happy place? Or are you working towards the next 60-hour workweek? What actually makes you happy? If you take anything from today’s issue, take a pause, and look around you. Re-align yourself.

  • I’m giving a talk at NahamCon this year! My talk is titled “Hacking How We Learn: Speedrunning Bug Bounty Proficiency with AI”. I’m on the AI track - you can see the scheduled talks here for Day 1 (AI Track) and here for Day 2 (General Track) - but rather than talking about my AI bugs, I opted to talk about how to boost hacker efficiency using AI instead. It is, in my mind, an equally important component of the effect that LLMs have had, and will have, on our industry.

  • I wish I had more to write this week, but I’m focused on working on my NahamCon talk. If all goes to plan, it’ll be a good one. See you all next week!

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