Episeclab: From Student to Security Pioneer

When I joined Epitech, I wasn’t some prodigy in waiting. I was coming off a disastrous college experience, where I’d ranked dead last. Teachers saw me as a lost cause. But in Epitech, I found programming. Days blurred into nights as I coded obsessively, clawing my way into the top ranks of my grade. My first year was solid, but my second? That’s when everything changed.

In the first week of my second year, I joined a Capture the Flag (CTF) security project. Not only did I solve every level, but I also hacked the platform hosting the CTF—and for good measure, the school’s systems. It wasn’t just a rush. It was like discovering a new language, one I was already fluent in without realizing it. IT security became my obsession.

I wasn’t alone. After the CTF, I connected with a group of like-minded students, all equally passionate about security. Together, we pitched the idea of a security lab to Epitech. The school gave us the green light, and just like that, Episeclab was born.

For five years, Episeclab became my playground, my testing ground, and my career springboard. We reimagined the security curriculum, created new challenges, and even conducted our own R&D. By my second year, I was already splitting my time between being a student and a teacher. By my final years, I wasn’t just attending the school—I was being paid by it. Where most students paid tuition, I was running projects, hiring teaching assistants, and learning alongside some of the brightest minds I’d ever met.

The lab wasn’t just about teaching others; it was a masterclass in skills I’d use for the rest of my life. Security isn’t just following a manual. It’s an art of analysis, empathy, and creativity. You dig into systems, uncover strange behaviors, and follow breadcrumbs until you’re writing exploits. It’s the ultimate proof of architectural thinking, seeing the big picture, and imagining how developers might have gone wrong.

Through Episeclab, I explored cryptography, side-channel attacks, security design patterns, low-level internals, and beyond. Every challenge was a window into a new world. It wasn’t just education—it was transformation.

Episeclab wasn’t just a project; it was the spark that ignited my career, a place where I learned not only how to break things but how to build myself in the process. Looking back, it wasn’t just the hacks that made it special—it was the people, the culture, and the endless curiosity that defined it.