Chatter Of The Squirrel

There’s Money In Hacking

April 22, 2009 on 1:11 am | In #CEH | No Comments

My first real exposure to the internet was 1996, with the Leonis server at NUS. Almost immediately I was testing the boundaries, and trying to find ways to do more than the system would trust me with. For a while I had an unhealthy preoccupation with IT Security.^_^

A lot of this was motivated by my desire to keep in touch with my friends after I left NUS for UM. These were the days just before Hotmail, and before ICQ. Heck, this was even before JavaScript >_< , so forget about eBuddy and stuff like that. All there was, was finger, and talk. And NUS wouldn’t let me log into Leonis from outside Singapore.

But it’s also because I like to take things apart and figure out how things tick. I own a lot of screwdrivers. Also knives… [insert ominous music] 

Anyone still remember Sneakers? For a while, I wanted to be like that. (Not like Redford, but the blind guy who figured out how the box worked, except not blind.) To be able to solve puzzles, and get paid and be respected for it. In those days such was fantasy.

But today, ethical hacking is a viable career. And making good money too it seems. If only this was the case a decade ago for me. Still, no harm picking up some new knowledge. The EC Council is conducting internet classes on a variety of IT security subjects. I’ve already signed up for the free one day webinar, something like a sneak preview to the courses. There are a number of interesting subjects, covering security fundamentals, ethical hacking, penetration testing, computer forensics, disaster recovery and secure programming. I’m gonna check them all out until I run out of free tries. Maybe they’ll fire up something that I’ve left unexplored for too long.

It seems that the webinar will be conducted through GoToMeeting.com, which is wonderful. I’ve earned a heap of Brownie pts at work introducing that service to my CEO. It is just the best way to do a presentation over the web that we’ve seen so far. Am very much looking forward to it.

#CEH