Recently, we had the pleasure of welcoming Inti De Ceukelaire, Head of Hackers at Intigriti, to our Howest podcast.
➡️ Please note: the podcast episode is entirely in Dutch.

Here’s an English summary of some key insights from our conversation with Inti.

The podcast was hosted by Bastien De Meulenaere, Ares Popal and Maxime Vanhoorneweder.

The Role of a “Head of Hackers” and Bug Bounties​

Inti explained his role at Intigriti, where he's responsible for building and maintaining Europe’s largest community of ethical hackers — around 150,000 strong.

“Just because you have a community doesn’t mean they enjoy working with you.”

Intigriti focuses on Bug Bounty programs, where companies invite hackers to find vulnerabilities and reward them based on results — not hours worked.

How It All Started​

For Inti, it all began with curiosity.

“I was just curious. How does hacking work? It can’t be black magic, right?”

That desire to understand hacking was the starting point of his journey.

More Than Just Technical Skills: The Opportunist​

Inti wasn't a hardcore gamer or hardware nerd. Instead, he called himself a “tech opportunist.”

“I just wanted to cheat at games. Tech helped me reach my goals.”

He viewed technology as a tool — not something to obsess over, but something to leverage.

Debunking the Introverted Hacker Myth​

When Ares mentioned the stereotypical lone hacker, Inti offered a fresh perspective.

“I can be introverted after big events, but around hackers, I’m energized.”

His background as a youth camp leader helped him develop communication and presentation skills.

“If you want to hack systems made and used by people, you should understand people too.”

The Power of Initiative and Seizing Opportunities​

A key theme throughout the episode was self-initiative.

“No one ever became an expert just by going to school and working 9-to-5.”

He urged students to:

• Attend (often free) conferences
• Start personal projects
• Try bug bounties — and embrace failure

“Life rewards the opportunist.”

Making Cybersecurity More Accessible​

Through Instagram and TikTok, Inti is reshaping how we talk about cybersecurity.

His shows like “Toverhacks” and the upcoming “Artifhacking Intelligence” present live hacking demos in an entertaining way, helping to break hacker stereotypes.

“I want to make ‘hacker’ the default. Ethical by default. Criminal hackers are a separate category.”

🤖 AI: A New Playground​

The rise of AI is a game-changer.

“With this AI wave, everyone is back on a level playing field.”

He’s experimenting with things like applying interrogation techniques to AI — but reminds us:

“AI is a magnifying glass. If you're bad, AI amplifies that. It's pattern recognition — not science fiction.”

Ethics, Legislation, and a “Criminal Record”​

Inti shared his own experience with outdated laws around ethical hacking.

“At 19, I reported a vulnerability and got prosecuted.”

That event pushed him to advocate for legal reform, contributing to Belgium’s now-progressive stance on ethical hacking — including programs like “Hack the Government.”

Conclusion: A Call to Action​

Inti's message to aspiring cybersecurity professionals is clear:

Be curious. Be an opportunist (in the best sense). Take initiative. And don’t fear unconventional paths.

Cybersecurity is always evolving — and the next opportunity could be yours to grab.

🎧 Listen to the full episode on Spotify (in Dutch) for even more insights from Inti De Ceukelaire.

With over 300 teams in the mix, the competition was tough. We tackled challenges in cryptography, forensics, web security, and reverse engineering, pushing ourselves to the limit. After a long grind and some late-night problem-solving, we ended up in 49th place. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to qualify for the next round, but the experience was absolutely worth it.

The best part? Working together under pressure, sharing knowledge, and getting hands-on with real-world security problems. It was a great way to learn and improve, and we picked up a ton of valuable insights along the way.

The following was one of the challenges, just to give you an idea.

Challenge: Apple.Cake​

For this challenge we were given a file called appel.cake.xz So started off searching what a xz file was. But this is simply a compressed file like a zip or 7z. Knowing this I quickly found a tool and on linux used the command “unxz apple.cake.xz”. Now that we have a file we want to figure out what kind of file it is. For this we can simply use the command “file” which let me know it is a filesystem. I recalled a good tool called Autopsy. The file system contained three partition. The first partion has the boot files etc while the second one has our user files. So i went to look here. The users Desktop folder contained a Raspberry Pie (rpi) manual which got me thinking. When you deploy a rpi you can set credentials and other settings in a config.txt in the boot partition.

At first glance this didn’t contain much. But I noticed a firstrun.sh script, this could be interesting. And indeed it was. It contained wifi credentials which ended up being the flag.

Even though we didn’t make it to the finals, the Cyber Security Challenge Belgium was an awesome experience. If you’re into cybersecurity, I’d highly recommend giving it a shot next year!

The Challenge​

Our team was challenged by Piros to deploy a project in an airgapped OpenShift environment. We were free to choose any project or system to deploy, which gave us the creative liberty to explore various options. After some brainstorming, we decided to build a honeypot solution with the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana) to monitor and analyze malicious activity to ensure nothing happens in our airgapped enviorment.

The idea was simple, deploy a honeypot to attract potential attackers and then use the ELK stack to capture and analyze any suspicious activity. However, things didn’t go entirely as planned.

The Struggles​

Setting up the ELK stack in an airgapped environment turned out to be much more challenging than we initially thought. We faced several issues with configuring and integrating the stack, and as the hours ticked by, it became clear that we wouldn’t get it working in time despite our best efforts.

In the final stretch we managed to get Cowrie up and running just in time before the end of the day. It was a massive relief to see the honeypot operational, even if we couldn’t present our initial vision with the ELK stack.

Presentation and Judging​

At the end of the event, all teams were required to present their solutions to the judges. Each presentation was an opportunity to showcase the work we’d done, explain the challenges we faced, and highlight how we overcame them. The Piros coaches, industry experts, judged the presentations based on technical complexity, creativity, and problem-solving skills.

In addition to the coaches’ votes, all participants were asked to vote for their top three teams. This made the competition even more engaging, as it added an element of peer recognition to the process.

Public Vote Victory​

While we didn’t manage to win the jury prize, something incredible happened: we won the public vote! For winning the public vote, we were awarded a really cool wooden desk lamp and a 3D-printed Hack The Future trophy.

Swag​

As a bonus, we also received some awesome swag! Piros gifted us some Red Hat socks and the organization spoiled us with candy, a 3D-printed "4 in a row" game, and a handy power bank. Definitely a great way to wrap up an already exciting day!

Why Docusaurus?​

• 🧱 Markdown-first: I can write everything in plain Markdown, which keeps things lightweight and clean.
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• 🔧 Fully customizable: React-based theming and plugin system give me room to grow.
• 🌍 Version control: Everything is stored and tracked in Git.

Deployment with GitHub Pages​

I host the site for free via GitHub Pages, with automatic deployment on every push using GitHub actions.
No server to maintain, no security patching. Just clean builds and instant updates.

What About My Old Setup?​

I’ve run my own infrastructure using Proxmox and Debian-based VMs on an HPE DL380p for a while now. That experience taught me a lot about self-hosting and managing web traffic through Cloudflare tunnels.
But for my blog, I now prefer a setup that lets me focus on content, not maintenance.

If you're looking for a developer-friendly static site generator, Docusaurus is definitely worth trying.

Lily​