Employment: Security Hacker

[Lifted]

Audio interview

http://www.thestory.org/stories/2013-06/employment-security-hacker

Jim Stickley realized he was a gifted thief when he was ten years old experimenting on his father’s computer. As he got older, he became more creative. Today, he’s a professional hacker. Companies hire him to attempt to hack into their financial information, and identify weaknesses in their security practices. Jim says it’s not all high-tech computer work, and he sometimes dresses up as an firefighter to gain access to an office building.

 

[Paperlantern]

Yeah, its called a pen tester. Ive known several over the years, one would use a janitor get up to get into office buildings, 95% of the time he said it got him right to the executive offices.

 

[SecurityTheatre]

I did this for 5 years. It's interesting work, but it generally involves living out of hotels for much of the year.

Still, it's quite interesting work. I would wager there are about 300-500 similarly employed people in the US and Canada working for consultancy firms, and probably 3-5 times as many working internally for large companies who do it as at least half of their work.

Every so often, a journalist runs into someone who does it and fires off some article, thinking they just discovered something new.

 

[blackangst1]

Yeah, its called a pen tester. Ive known several over the years, one would use a janitor get up to get into office buildings, 95% of the time he said it got him right to the executive offices.

Yep this.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Thank you this is pretty interesting.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Interesting.

I've been looking at moving into the field for a while now. I'm currently working in IT and after identifying a number of Cross Site Scripting attack vectors in my bosses websites, plus hacked our buildings RFID door lock system, as well as picking half the locks in the office, I'm starting to think I might be ready for a professional switch.