I'm Teaching Myself Ethical Hacking Using Only a Phone — Here's My Story

#beginners #cybersecurity #security #android

Hey, I'm NightWalker 👋

My name is Mohammed Rinshan — online, I go by NightWalker. I'm a Class 12 Humanities student from Malappuram, Kerala, India, and for as long as I can remember, I've wanted to become an ethical hacker.

That dream goes back to Class 4. No exaggeration — it's the one subject I've never stopped coming back to since.

Here's the part that usually surprises people: I don't have a laptop. Every tool I've run, every experiment, every project I've shipped has come out of a single unrooted Android phone with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. It's slower than it should be. It hasn't stopped the work.

I put together a full portfolio site recently to bring all of this together in one place:

👉 nightwalkerofc.github.io

What I actually work on

I split what I know honestly into two buckets — what I've actually done hands-on, and what I've studied deeply but haven't had the hardware to fully test yet:

Hands-on:

APK reverse engineering with MT Manager
Smali / DEX-level editing
Android security research and vulnerability analysis
OSINT tooling and reconnaissance
Linux, and a genuinely mobile-first workflow

Studied / theory:

Social engineering
iOS security concepts
Defending against different classes of cyberattacks
Account recovery and protection
Cyber awareness — I like explaining this stuff simply, for hackers and non-technical people alike

Projects I've built

Five projects live on the portfolio right now:

NW OSINT Tool — an all-in-one recon console covering usernames, IPs, domains, emails, phone numbers, and more, all under one menu
NW Telegram File Streaming — a custom Telegram build patched at the smali/DEX level so files stream directly instead of requiring a full download
NW CyberSafeHub — a CVE awareness hub for both hackers and everyday users
NW Electronic Voting Website — an admin-approved platform for running real elections online
NW Parent and Child App — a two-app system for student device safety

Each one has a full breakdown on the site, styled like a phone home screen you can tap through.

Why I'm posting this

I'm at the start of this journey, not the end of it. No formal training, no lab setup, no laptop — just a lot of hours and a phone. If you're in a similar spot — limited hardware, self-taught, not sure if it "counts" without the traditional setup — it does. Keep going.

I also offer a few things for free if anyone needs a hand: