~/posts/shentinelix-round1-to-round2
24 labs later: from Shentinelix Round 1 training to Round 2 projects
- internships
- security
- tryhackme
Every internship has a quiet phase that nobody sees — the one where you grind labs before you're trusted with anything real. At Shentinelix Sphere that phase was Round 1: three months of structured training that ended with a selection notice and two projects. This post is the part before the projects.
The setup
- Offer: Sep 4, 2025 (Ref: CTI/A1/C21403) — Cyber Security Intern
- Agreement: 20 Sep – 25 Dec 2025, fully remote
- Structure: Month 1 training labs → individual project → client-based work
The internship ran a 3-month remote program built on TryHackMe and EC-Council labs, with weekly assessments and task batches submitted on fixed dates.
Round 1: the 24-task grind
Round 1 was a structured series of labs across four submission batches (Sep 27 → Oct 25, 2025). Pulled together, the coverage looked like this:
Foundations & research skills Intro to Research · Starting Out in Cybersec · Physical Security Intro · Secure SDLC
Networking, recon & OSINT DNS in Detail · Traffic Analysis Essentials · Pentesting Fundamentals · Passive & Active Recon · OhSINT · Shodan · Google Dorking · SearchLight OSINT · Sakura
Linux & scripting Linux Fundamentals · Linux Strength Training · Python Basics · Intro to PoC Scripting · Python Playground · Peak Hill
Web security & vulnerabilities OWASP Top 10 (2021) · OpenVAS · SQL Injection Attacks (EC-Council) · UltraTech
Windows & Active Directory Win AD Basics · Attacking Active Directory · Windows x64 Assembly
Detection, SIEM & blue team Snort · Intro to SIEM · H4cked · Carnage · CCT 2019
Malware & reverse engineering History of Malware · Malware Intro · Basic Malware RE · Reversing ELF · Reverse Engineering Files
EC-Council extras Dark Web, Anonymity & Cryptocurrency · Wi-Fi Hacking 101 · SAN & NAS Storage
Every batch had to be original work — the program's guidelines were blunt about plagiarism — and each one got documented with screenshot evidence. That evidence deck, 20+ screenshots of completed rooms, was the submission that moved me forward.
The selection
On Oct 30, 2025, Shentinelix announced Round 2 of the program: each selected intern had to build two individual projects, each in a different cybersecurity domain, real-time and innovative, with no fixed deadline — depth over speed, with the results showcased to the international security community.
That notice is where the real work started. The two projects I built:
- AI Threat Detection & Security Operations — emails, URLs, QR codes, and logs in one SOC platform
- LLM Security & Data Privacy Compliance Middleware — a gateway that guards every prompt before it reaches an LLM
What Round 1 taught me
- Volume builds instinct. Two dozen labs across OSINT, AD, SIEM, and malware means the next tool you meet already looks familiar.
- Screenshots are documentation. The discipline of capturing and explaining every step is the same discipline that later produced clean project docs.
- Consistency compounds. Weekly batches on a deadline — no room for bingeing at the end.