Mahnoor

Penetration Tester

Jul 2025 - Present • 1 yr

Working as a Junior Penetration Tester at a cybersecurity firm in Islamabad with responsibilities including offensive security, detection engineering, and SOC operations. Key work includes: • Security testing of Network Detection & Response (NDR) systems simulating real-world attack scenarios and validating detection use cases • Adversary emulation using MITRE Caldera to simulate multi-stage attack chains and assess defensive coverage gaps. • Generating encrypted, obfuscated, and simulated malicious traffic to evaluate detection accuracy and evasion resilience • Deploying and evaluating honeypots (T-Pot, Cowrie) for threat intelligence and attacker behavior analysis • Malware research and behavioral analysis using Cuckoo Sandbox; static analysis using Ghidra and IDA Pro. • Reverse engineering malware samples including ransomware to understand encryption routines and C2 communication patterns • Integration and tuning of Wazuh SIEM with Catalyst SOAR for automated alert correlation and incident response workflows • Conducted internal security audit using CISO Assistant , assessed configuration, access controls, and security posture. • Supporting SOC operations: alert triage, log analysis, threat hunting, and incident response handling • Researched document-based payload delivery techniques and related attack paths • Developed an AI-driven agentic penetration testing framework integrated with a Telegram bot , tester can send a target via Telegram, triggers automated recon, exploit chaining, and reporting via Claude/OpenRouter API • Utilized AI-assisted penetration testing tools to enhance reconnaissance, analysis, and testing efficiency

Cyber Defense & Network Security Intern

Jul 2024 - Sep 2024 • 2 mos

Comparative analysis of firewall technologies, SIEM monitoring, alert analysis, and log management.

Cyber Security Intern

Jul 2024 - Sep 2024 • 2 mos

VAPT on vulnerable lab environments (DVWA, Metasploitable), identified SQL Injection, XSS, and command injection vulnerabilities, deployed and configured Wazuh SIEM for log collection and security event analysi