About this site

Hi, I'm Jan Alhorn — an IT infrastructure and security professional based in Germany with over 9 years of hands-on experience.

By day, I work in IT operations managing real-world infrastructure: networks, Linux and Windows servers, Cisco switches, firewalls. I've spent a lot of time with things like Sophos, UniFi, Docker deployments. I support a company of around 2,500 employees — which means the infrastructure is large enough to throw real, messy problems at you on a regular basis and small enough that I'm often the one who has to dig in and actually fix them, not just escalate them somewhere else.

Over time, my interest shifted more and more toward the security side of things — not just keeping systems running, but understanding how they can be broken. That led me to platforms like TryHackMe, where I work through SOC analyst labs, CTF challenges, and penetration testing rooms to sharpen my offensive and defensive skills.

Traceroute Tales is where I document all of that — TryHackMe walkthroughs, sysadmin fixes I've actually had to apply in production, security concepts I'm learning, and the occasional deep dive into something that just wouldn't let me go.

If something here helped you fix a problem or pass a room — that's exactly why I write it.

You can find me on TryHackMe as JanAlhorn.