I liked this post by Tim MalcolmVetter: How to Pass a Red Team Interview. Some takeaways from it are definitions of what red team means and characteristics of a good red team candidate.

Trustworthiness – I tend to stick to the term integrity, but mostly because I think it has similar, but broader meaning.

Know the role/know yourself – Kind of goes without saying.

Healthy competition – I like this one, and it should go without saying, but still unfortunately needs said. The offensive teams exist to help test, inform, and improve the blue team. This often just means being able to help the blue team stop attacks that get through and missed weaknesses, but could mean much deeper interaction.

Creativity – This is one thing I really like about security. In terms of normal IT operations, sure you can be creative with solutions and dealing with people, but often you’re still playing within the bumpers of a bowling lane, i.e. technology capabilities and limitations (developers excepted). With security, you can creatively look between the lanes, over the lanes, under the lanes. You get to poke in the places not normally poked and do so in creative ways on a red team. Good security is as much an art as an objective, to me.

Operational IT experience – I like seeing this item here, though I’m sure entry level security aspirants hate seeing it. But it continues to be true, even more so for a red team member whose goal is to inform the blue team intelligently. In order to do so, you need some measure of understanding about what the blue team is doing, how they do it, why they do it, and why the business needs get weaved into that. It’s not just to know the gaps in the blue team defenses (because you’ve felt those gaps from being on the blue team). It also helps when being creative with attacks and when setting up testing labs.

Development skills – This tends to be one of the harder places to get started. 1) Learn some language or scripting tool, 2) find ways to get practice, and 3) find more ways to keep practiced. It’s those last two that can be difficult and often takes real effort unless you have some corporate project set in front of you that you can use that knowledge against. The author’s point here is excellent (though I would add in some Bash knowledge): “Red Team candidates should at least script in python or powershell. Candidates who can build web apps, implants in C/C++, and manage infrastructure will have a huge leg up.” I really like the inclusion of being able to build a web app, maybe not necessarily an “app” as much as a dynamic web page, but along with that comes valuable knowledge in web architecture, server configuration, coding, SQL, etc.

Unique skills – I also like seeing this item, though it’s a hard pill to swallow for so many. But that’s the point of true red teams; a team of people who fill various roles and specializations. A team of people who all kinda do the same thing isn’t very efficient. Now, that’s not to say every person should come into a new team and be the absolute expert on a particular thing or technology or technique, but they should be the expert of that thing on their team. Until you find a good team to call home for a long time, it’s good to be broad and/or have things one is better at, but definitely look for those gaps in any team you interview with and see if you can fit those openings. Chances are good candidates can adapt and utilize their experience, integrity, and creativity to fill most gaps in a red team.

Lastly, I wanted to just flat out quote the author, “…if you can phish and think like a covert systems administrator, then you can probably be successful on a red team.” But also know that, …”If you want to end up doing red team work, then do yourself a favor and get a variety of roles and exposure before moving into red team — it will still be there when you’re ready.”