About me
Hi, I'm Thái Ngọc Diễm Trinh - but you can just call me Thái Trinh.
I'm currently a final-year student majoring in Information Security at the University of Information Technology - VNU, and I'm expected to graduate in early 2026. Alongside my studies, I'm working as a SOC Analyst Intern at an IT solutions company.
My interests and skills focus on Blue Team practices, including threat hunting, log analysis, and digital forensics. Through both academic training and real-world projects, I've built a strong foundation in detecting malicious activities, investigating incidents, and improving overall security posture.
My journey into cybersecurity
Interestingly, cybersecurity wasn't my childhood dream. As a kid, I once wanted to become a primary school teacher. Later, during secondary school, I was drawn to International Relations. For the longest time, I believed I would pursue one of these paths in university.
Everything changed in my final year of high school. When it came time to choose my major, for several reasons I ended up applying to Information Security - a field I hadn't really planned for. At first, it felt like an unexpected turn. But once I stepped into this path, I decided to embrace it wholeheartedly. And today, I can say that I genuinely enjoy the challenges and opportunities it brings.
I am particularly fascinated by the defensive side of cybersecurity. I spend much of my time exploring CTF challenges, not only as a way to sharpen my problem-solving skills but also to simulate real-world attack scenarios. From there, my passion naturally extends into incident response and threat hunting, where I enjoy piecing together scattered evidence to uncover malicious activity. I am also deeply interested in malware analysis, as it allows me to understand adversary techniques at a deeper level and strengthen defensive strategies accordingly.
Here are a few funny things I've done on during my studies (others can be found throughout this blog):
| Project | Description | Type | Role | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personal website | Developed a simple blog website using Docusaurus (yes, this very one you're scrolling through!). | Personal project | Lead contributor | Link |
| Minigame Đường lên đỉnh Olympia | Recreated two rounds of the Đường lên đỉnh Olympia TV quiz show using WinForms. | Coursework project | Contributor | Link |
| DLL Side Loading attack PoC & Detection tool | Researched and implemented DLL Side Loading techniques to bypass Windows Defender. Developed a monitoring and detection tool to identify such attacks. | Coursework project | Lead contributor | Link |
| In-vehicle IDS using PU learning and GAN | Developed an IDS for in-vehicle networks using the CICIoV2024 dataset, exploring supervised and Positive-Unlabeled learning with CTGAN-based data augmentation to address class imbalance and limited labeled samples in automotive cybersecurity. | Coursework project | Lead contributor | Link |
| Digital forensics CTF challenges | Designed and implemented three medium-to-high difficulty CTF challenges covering Steganography, Network, and Android Forensics topics. | Coursework project | Lead contributor | Link |
About this blog
This blog is where I share:
- CTF write-ups (documented in detail, not just for myself but also for others to learn from)
- Lab experiments and case studies
- Knowledge and techniques around blue teaming, threat hunting, and digital forensics
My writing style is hands-on, detailed, and approachable. I aim to make technical concepts easier to understand and to provide clear demonstrations wherever possible.
(By the way, I'm not very good at writing, so I sometimes use AI to help me express things better - hope you don't mind!)
Beyond cybersecurity
Outside of InfoSec, I enjoy making handmade crafts and crochet. I even run a separate site dedicated to sharing crochet projects and little stories around that hobby. And when I'm not busy with security or crafting, you'll probably find me cheering for my favorite esports team - I'm a proud, long-time fan of FINHAY Cerberus Esports.
That's a little about me. Thanks for visiting my corner of the internet - I hope you find something useful or inspiring here!