Interviewed by: Mehadi Hasan
Developer: Rugero Tesla
Role: ICS/OT Security Researcher | Industrial Systems & Security Research
Location: Rwanda
Website: rugerotesla.tech
Rugero Tesla once imagined becoming the kind of hacker he had seen in Hollywood movies: someone who could break into supposedly secure systems with a few commands and walk away victorious. Over time, that childhood fantasy gave way to a more grounded ambition. Today, his interests lie in understanding industrial systems, investigating their weaknesses, and contributing to the security of infrastructure that people depend on.
His journey into industrial control systems and operational technology (ICS/OT) security has been shaped by curiosity, practical experimentation, and a willingness to learn without waiting for perfect resources or formal opportunities. From exploring computers as a child to building security laboratories and researching industrial communication protocols, Tesla has gradually found a field that connects his technical interests with a purpose he cares about.
In this CoderLegion Developer Story, Tesla shares how his early fascination with computers developed into a commitment to industrial security research, why publishing his work changed his professional trajectory, and what he has learned about building a career when access to equipment, opportunities, and industry connections can be difficult.
A Childhood Built Around Figuring Things Out
Tesla's interest in technology began at home. His father worked as an IT technician and regularly repaired computers. What fascinated Tesla was not just the work itself, but the fact that his father had taught himself how to do it.
When Tesla was around five years old, his father showed him how to burn an operating system onto a CD and install it. At seven, he received his own computer after earning good grades. While hardware was not his primary interest, exploring software quickly became a favorite activity.
He spent hours investigating his computer, sometimes changing things he did not fully understand. Whenever something broke, however, there was a problem: he was afraid of his father's reaction if he could not fix it.
That fear pushed him to investigate what had gone wrong and find a solution. Over time, troubleshooting became more than a way to avoid getting into trouble. It became a habit of approaching unfamiliar problems with patience and determination.
Looking back, Tesla recognizes the connection between those childhood experiences and his current work.
He developed an early belief that spending enough time with a problem would eventually help him understand it. Even without knowing the correct approach at the beginning, he would search for alternatives until something made sense.
His formal introduction to computer science came later, during A-level studies in mathematics, computer science, and economics. The concepts came naturally to him, reinforcing his enjoyment of understanding how systems worked.
At that stage, he did not yet know where his interest would lead. He simply knew that computers offered an endless supply of things to investigate.
When Hollywood Hacking Met Reality
Tesla's first idea of hacking came from movies released during the 1990s and 2000s. In those stories, hacking appeared almost effortless. A character would sit in front of a computer, type a few commands, compromise a supposedly secure system, and achieve something extraordinary.
That portrayal shaped his early ambitions.
He even imagined that learning to hack banks would guarantee financial security. It was a childhood fantasy, but one that eventually developed into a genuine interest in cybersecurity.
During his final year of high school, a teacher introduced him to the subject. Something clicked, and Tesla decided he wanted to study cybersecurity at university.
His father supported the decision by enrolling him in Cisco's cybersecurity summer camp after high school. The experience became his first serious introduction to the field, but it also challenged his expectations.
Real cybersecurity was considerably more complicated than the movies suggested. Modern systems had security controls, and successful attacks were rarely as simple as the fictional scenarios he had grown up watching.
He also began reconsidering what he wanted to accomplish with his skills. Harming people, stealing their money, exposing their private information, or deceiving them was no longer part of the picture he wanted for himself.
He still wanted to understand how systems could be compromised. The difference was that he wanted to pursue that knowledge without using it to hurt others.
A mentor helped him take the next step by introducing practical exercises, homelabs, and scenarios that allowed him to experiment with systems he controlled.
This hands-on learning was valuable, but it exposed another limitation. Some exercises depended on deliberately weakening the security of a laboratory environment to make an attack succeed. That made it difficult for him to understand how easily the same attack might translate to real-world systems.
The experience taught him that following an attack scenario was not the same as developing a deeper understanding of security.
He wanted to investigate systems more realistically, understand their weaknesses, and build skills that could eventually support a legitimate professional career.
The Challenge of Entering Cybersecurity Without a Degree
After completing his initial training, Tesla began searching for internships and other opportunities. Many organizations turned him down because he did not have a university degree.
For someone who had invested time in learning, building laboratories, and developing practical skills, the repeated rejections were frustrating.
Rather than stopping, he continued creating projects.
He wrote scripts that could exploit systems in his own laboratories and published them on GitHub. He hoped others would discover the repositories, find them useful, and engage with his work.
Most received little attention.
The experience highlighted a difficult reality for an aspiring security researcher: building something technically interesting does not guarantee that anyone will find it. Even when the work requires substantial effort, a public repository can remain unnoticed.
Tesla was also becoming less interested in testing attacks against laboratory targets simply for the sake of completing an exercise. He wanted his work to lead somewhere meaningful, both professionally and personally.
An incident involving an attempted scam became a turning point in how he thought about the boundaries of security research.
After following a link sent by someone attempting to scam him, he discovered what appeared to be evidence of a larger scam campaign in his country. He took matters into his own hands, exported a database, deleted it from the servers, and contacted his country's investigation bureau.
He provided the information he had gathered and eventually met the head of the cybersecurity bureau, who thanked him.
Despite that response, Tesla was uncomfortable with his own actions. He recognized that he had crossed a line, even if his intentions had been to help.
The experience reinforced an important distinction: wanting to investigate security weaknesses does not automatically justify every action taken during an investigation.
Tesla had originally wanted to become a professional penetration tester. He wanted to apply his technical skills legitimately and earn a living doing the work.
After struggling to find opportunities without a degree, he decided that enrolling in university was the practical next step toward building that career.
Discovering Industrial Control Systems and Operational Technology
University did not immediately solve the problem of finding the right direction.
Tesla had already spent three years studying computer science at A-level, so revisiting much of the same material left him feeling stuck. He also began to question whether conventional software-focused work was what he wanted to pursue.
He enjoyed understanding systems, but reading code and hunting for software bugs did not interest him as much as he had expected.
What attracted him instead was infrastructure: the systems beyond the code editor, how they communicated, and how their components worked together.
That curiosity led him toward industrial control systems and operational technology, commonly known as ICS/OT.
Although he explored IoT security, it was industrial security that held his attention. He became interested in the fragility of industrial environments and the importance of protecting systems connected to real infrastructure.
Unlike a purely software-based problem, a weakness in an industrial environment can have consequences beyond the computer itself. That responsibility became an important part of the appeal.
Tesla did not want to abandon offensive security. He still wanted to understand how systems could be compromised and what might go wrong. However, he also wanted to use that understanding to help protect them.
The role of a security researcher offered a better fit than defining himself exclusively as a penetration tester. It allowed him to investigate systems, study weaknesses, and explore defensive implications while continuing to develop his technical knowledge.
For the first time, his interests seemed to fit together.
There was still a practical obstacle. ICS/OT security could be difficult to access without the money for industrial equipment, specialized training, or suitable research environments.
Tesla changed his university schedule to weekend classes to create more time for independent work during the week. He then decided to approach industrial security in the same way his father had approached computers: learn independently, use available resources, and figure things out.
Learning Industrial Protocols With the Resources Available
Tesla began by studying industrial protocols because he wanted to understand how industrial systems communicated.
His approach was practical rather than dependent on having access to an extensive industrial laboratory. He worked with the resources available to him, investigating systems and building projects that helped him develop his understanding.
One of his early projects in this direction was Modbus Exposure Analyzer. He published an article about the tool on DEV Community, initially treating it as another opportunity to document and share what he was learning.
He was not yet thinking seriously about personal branding or building a public professional identity. His focus was on learning, creating tools, and sharing the results.
Then an unexpected discovery changed his perspective.
While searching Google for his uncle's name, Tesla noticed that Google's AI Overview had surfaced information about his uncle, a well-known oncologist in Rwanda. He decided to search for his own name as well.
The result surprised him. Google's AI Overview described him as an ICS/OT Offensive Security Researcher known for Modbus Exposure Analyzer.
He had published an article about a tool and largely left it alone. Yet that single piece of public work had become part of how he was represented online.
The discovery made him reconsider the value of publishing.
Until then, he had spent considerable time trying to convince organizations of his abilities, often encountering rejection because he lacked formal qualifications. Public technical work offered another way for people to discover his skills and evaluate what he could actually do.
Publishing also served an educational purpose. Tesla wanted others to study his work, point out mistakes, and contribute their own ideas.
GitHub remained useful for sharing code, but articles could reach readers who might never discover a repository on their own.
He also wanted to demonstrate that beginning to learn ICS/OT security did not necessarily require a large budget. With available resources, a willingness to experiment, and a commitment to documenting findings, aspiring researchers could begin developing their knowledge.
That philosophy became the foundation of his industrial protocol research series.
How Public Research Created Unexpected Connections
For a long time, Tesla did not know what his published work might lead to. He continued investigating industrial protocols and sharing his progress.
Eventually, those publications began connecting him with people who had experience he could learn from.
One notable moment came when he posted a screenshot on LinkedIn showing his progress through his industrial protocol series. He was one protocol away from reaching IEC 61850.
Parker McCauley, a systems architect, commented on the post and suggested that Tesla contact Bruce Muschlitz to learn more about the history behind IEC 61850.
Muschlitz was a veteran utility communications engineer who had served for more than two decades as chairman of the UCA International Users Group Testing Committee, working with its device conformity testing program for IEC 61850.
Tesla reached out, and their conversation provided valuable input that informed his research.
The connection was significant because it emerged from something relatively simple: sharing progress publicly.
Tesla had not planned the interaction or known that the connection existed. He had been working through industrial protocols with the resources available to him and documenting what he learned. By making that work visible, he created an opportunity to connect with someone whose experience could deepen his understanding.
His public work also led to professional opportunities, including job offers that he ultimately declined. He has chosen not to disclose the details, but he sees the opportunities as evidence that people can recognize practical abilities through published work, even when those abilities are not backed by a degree.
The contrast with his earlier experience was striking. Repositories that once seemed to disappear into the internet were helping him build professional connections and attract interest in his work.
Publishing did not eliminate every barrier, but it gave him another way to demonstrate what he could do.
Why Ethical Security Research Matters
Tesla's journey has also changed his understanding of what it means to be a hacker.
His early interest came from fictional portrayals of people breaking into systems. As he gained practical experience, he began separating the technical challenge of understanding vulnerabilities from the decision to exploit them against others.
That distinction matters particularly in security research, where technical capability must be accompanied by judgment about authorization, potential harm, and responsibility.
His own experience with the suspected scam campaign made that lesson personal. Even though he intended to help, he recognized that his actions had crossed a boundary.
Today, he wants to understand how industrial systems can fail or be compromised while contributing to their protection.
This approach does not require abandoning offensive security knowledge. Instead, it means directing that knowledge toward legitimate investigation and better defenses.
For Tesla, ICS/OT security offers a way to combine curiosity about how systems work with an interest in protecting infrastructure that extends beyond the digital world.
It also gives his work a clearer purpose: learning about weaknesses is valuable not simply because a system can be broken, but because understanding those weaknesses can help people protect what matters.
The Lessons He Would Share With Aspiring Researchers
Tesla's experience has shaped three principles he wants other aspiring researchers to understand.
Keep your curiosity alive
His first piece of advice is to preserve the curiosity that initially drew you to technology.
For him, that curiosity began with a computer at home and a desire to understand what happened when something broke. His professional direction changed over time, but his interest in investigating unfamiliar systems remained.
He recognizes that people who study computer science may eventually pursue entirely different careers, and there is nothing wrong with that. What matters is staying connected to the interests that genuinely motivate you.
Find another way forward
Tesla's second lesson is to look for a workaround when the expected path is unavailable.
He faced barriers involving formal qualifications, access to industrial equipment, training costs, and professional opportunities. Rather than waiting until every obstacle disappeared, he began working with the resources he already had.
That does not mean every limitation can be overcome through effort alone. Circumstances and access to resources matter. But when one route fails, finding another way to make progress can keep a long-term goal within reach.
For aspiring ICS/OT researchers, this means looking for practical learning opportunities that fit their circumstances, developing projects around available resources, and documenting the results.
Don't confuse hacking with harming people
His third lesson concerns ethics.
The idea that hacking was inherently cool or impressive came partly from the movies he watched growing up. Real experience taught him that technical ability does not make harmful behavior acceptable.
Stealing information, scamming people, or crossing legal and ethical boundaries is not justified simply because someone possesses the skills to do it.
Security professionals can investigate systems, understand vulnerabilities, and develop offensive capabilities without deliberately making other people's lives worse.
For Tesla, that distinction is central to the kind of researcher he wants to become.
Building a Career That Fits Who He Is
Tesla does not describe his current direction as the destination he originally imagined. He once wanted to become a penetration tester and thought professional hacking was the ultimate goal.
His interests have evolved, and he is comfortable with that change.
ICS/OT security research brings together several things he values: understanding unfamiliar systems, investigating how they work, discovering weaknesses, and contributing to their protection.
He also wants to make learning more accessible to others who encounter the same barriers he did. He knows what it feels like to enter a field and discover that the resources needed to progress can be expensive or difficult to obtain.
By publishing research, sharing tools, and explaining what he learns, he hopes to make it easier for others to begin exploring industrial security.
His plans will continue to develop as he gains experience, but his priorities remain consistent: doing work he cares about, building a sustainable career, protecting important systems, and helping other people learn.
The most meaningful change in Tesla's journey is not simply that he moved from one security specialization to another. It is that he found a way to direct his curiosity toward work that aligns with his values.
The child who once experimented with computers because he wanted to understand how they worked has become a researcher investigating the security of industrial systems. Along the way, he has learned that progress does not always depend on following the expected route, that sharing work can create opportunities that formal credentials alone may not provide, and that technical ability is most valuable when paired with responsibility.
He may not have become the hacker he imagined while watching Hollywood movies. Instead, he is building a career around something more meaningful to him: understanding the systems that shape the real world and helping make them more secure.
About Rugero Tesla
Rugero Tesla is an ICS/OT Security Researcher based in Rwanda, focused on industrial systems, security research, and industrial communication protocols. His technical interests include PLC security research, OT network architecture, industrial protocol analysis, and reproducible security research. He works with tools and languages including Python, Bash, C/C++, and PowerShell.
Developer Stories is a CoderLegion interview series highlighting the people, ideas, projects, and engineering decisions behind software development.
