The new Breaker 101 course has launched

First things first: I cannot thank HN enough for the support that I've had with Breaker 101. The vast majority of students in the first run came from HN; I would not have had a sold out beta were it not for this community.

Now, since this is HN, I feel like I should give a little bit of 'inside' info on how things really went. As I mention on the site, feedback was uniformly positive, but that doesn't mean there weren't missteps aplenty. From Paypal freezing my funds (man, that was a bad idea) to emails being lost in the mix over and over, to infrastructure problems with video streaming.

But the key problem was always disorganization and communication. There were 65 students in the first run, and communication happened over email, IRC, and the forums. Having all those options for communication seemed like a good idea -- flexibility is never wrong, right? -- it backfired. It meant that scheduling changes, homework information, etc was always being lost in the mix. That was the biggest problem in the course, as identified by pretty much every student in the class.

But I've spent the last month and a half working my ass off on a brand new platform for communication. While the IRC channel will still exist, this new site is where all homework, exams, lecture videos, scheduling info, etc will be distributed. I believe this will solve the core problem of the first run and make this the best course ever.

As a first-time teacher, I was nervous as hell going into this. But I could never have imagined it going this well. Every single student that finished the course (there were quite a lot of dropouts due to a lack of time -- natural consequence of a class for people who are typically quite busy) passed successfully. One student passed with an incredible 99.8% overall score, despite no background in security going in. If the next batch of students is even half as awesome as the previous one, I have no doubt that they will succeed just as impressively.

I can't thank my students enough for making this a success; I wouldn't be here writing this right now if not for them.

So as a huge thank you to HN and everyone who has supported me in this, I'm offering a 20% discount to everyone here: https://breaker101.daeken.com/?code=hn

Seriously, I can't thank you all enough. Breaker 101 is going to make the world a more secure place and none of this would be happening if not for all of you.

Using a basic bootstrap template and not putting a price on the homepage makes it look free.

Try to register and you're surprised by a $2,200 fee. Now you have my email address and had I known upfront, I'd not to have given it to you.

Would you say this is only for entry level pentesters? In my case I work as a professional application pentester but I'm looking for training to help me "get to the next level".

Currently I'm looking at Offensive Security's OSWE or SANS Advanced Web Pentesting, but I like the idea of an extended course with 1 on 1 interaction.

Awesome!

...

What is the price? The first 10 seats are priced at $2000 or 2.2BTC. Each subsequent seat is $2500 or 2.7BTC.

...oh.

I'm not saying that I don't think it's worth it. Maybe I'm just surprised since I've become used to free MOOCs and other educational sites that cost less than $100/month. Still, this looks really cool. Best of luck to you.

That statement should've read "web security professional"; just fixed and pushed. You're right, there are courses out there to teach you a broad spectrum of security topics, including some web content. That said, Breaker 101 covers a pretty crazy breadth and depth. The web topics covered in OffSec's course are covered in the first few weeks of Breaker 101, with significantly deeper excursions and more advanced topics after that.

OffSec's course is good for a very broad-strokes overview of security, but it doesn't dive deep, which is -- I believe -- Breaker 101's strength. The goal is that you come out of the course fully able to perform well in a web security environment, and I believe it does that.