Getting Your Start Because You Wanted to Get Paid For Hacking

[cmerkel at gmail.com (Chris Merkel)]

A variation on that other thread. I didn't get my start in infosec
because I got hacked. I was a huge (beige hat) fan of the movie War
Games, if you catch my drift.

BBSs, tymnet, telenet (no, that's not a typo kids...) and other random
x.25 links found via wardialing were my first playgrounds. I remember
one day, as the sun rose on a typical all-nighter, I said to myself
"Cool, I just taught myself how to use DEC VMS, I bet I'd be good at a
job working with computers..."

So, who got into IT in the hopes that they could one day start getting
paid for something they had done for fun in the past? (And is willing
to admit it ;-)

I did - it's still a lot of fun, though there's a lot more paperwork involved.


-- 
- Chris Merkel