Hacker History

Ela grew up in East Germany during the 1980s, where they were introduced to computers and electronics at a young age. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ela became deeply involved in the hacker scene, joining the Chaos Computer Club, attending early DEFCONs, and witnessing the merging of East and West German hacker cultures. […]

Hacker History sits down with Marc Boorshtein, we learn of his journey from tinkering with Doom shareware as a kid and getting free hardware from his Dad. Marc tells us about the early days of LDAP and Kerberos to modern Kubernetes, he shares war stories about managing critical infrastructure and accidentally shutting down a company's […]

Hacker History sits down with Cyberpunk Librarian. We hear about his early years of Commodore 64 and BBS, the usual getting in trouble in school and making computers do whatever they want. We then get to learn about the journey of Cyberpunk Librarian as an actual librarian. You're going to learn more about how libraries […]

Hacker History sits down with Johnny Xmas. Johnny tells us about his journey into the world of hacking and tech, starting from his childhood, he discusses taking things apart (like a wall outlet), putting them back together, typewriters, libraries and getting into plenty of trouble in high school, and finally landing in music school. It's […]

Hacker History sits down with The Gibson. We cover how Gibson got to where he is today. We start out hearing of Gibson's early hacker days, then he decides to get out of the hacker scene for a while. But Gibson is drawn back in, and start doing some amazing world changing work. We hear […]

Hacker History sits down with Wade Wells. Wade sits on the board of BSides San Diego and has an amazing journey that got him there. Wade recounts how he started out at In-N-Out Burgers and made his way into security. Every step of the way he leveled up and now is an amazing community member […]

Hacker History sits down with Dana Morrison and hears his story into tech. Dana starts out with a Commodore 64 and writes a war dialer as one of the first projects. He starts out with a BBS and eventually hacks into his school's BBS system. Dana goes to college as a theology major and ends […]

Hacker History sits down with Jindrich Krasek. We hear about how Jindrich's journey started out as a medical researcher. He had to hack a machine he was using to make it work in new ways, and that experience hooked him as a hacker. He starts out with social engineering to get his foot in the […]

Hacker History sits down with HD Moore. We hear about his story when he was young and making hardware work that probably shouldn't have worked. His shenanigans in the days of IRC and warez, and how that led its way into the Metasploit project. The impact of Metasploit cannot be understated. The world in the […]

Hacker History sits down with Paul Asadoorian and learn about his journey. Paul starts out with an Apple II, BASIC, and Pascal as a youth, then finds himself picking up UNIX and Linux, working at a university on amazing projects, and find himself in the world of security. We hear about Paul's days at Tenable, […]

Hacker History sits down with Emily Fox. We hear about Emily's history in the US Federal Government where she got a start in technology. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from working in the public sector. Then on to Apple and finally landing at Red Hat. Emily does a ton of amazing […]

Hacker History sits down with Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda. Rob tells us all about how he created Slashdot back in the day. Rob's story is full of amazing twists and turns. He started one of the most influential websites ever created while in college and it grew into being an amazing community. Rob gives us a […]

Hacker History sits down with Kyle Rankin to hear his story. Kyle walks us through his journey into being an author of many technical books. We touch on early topics like Knoppix, DevOps, infosec, Linux Journal, and more. Then, in the most meta way possible, Kyle has written a book about writing technical books. It's […]

Hacker History sits down with signal9 and talk about his story. He starts out learning computers in the 80's then takes a massive detour into the world of log cabin building (not a metaphor). Eventually he finds his way back into helpdesk, then developing, and then security. All while keeping the hacker mindset in tow. […]

Hacker History sits down with Robert Reif or winxp5421 to hear his story. Robert got a start on some old gear, left tech for a while, and now runs password cracking villages and participates in password cracking contests. The conversation is a fascinating view into the world of competitive password cracking with some advice and […]

Hacker History sits down with Gianluca Varisco and learns about his story. He started out in 90s working on micro computers. We learn how he got into security, started an ISP. Learned about Linux and open source. Eventually lands at Red Hat, gets into encrypted VOIP in the very early days. Gianluca spends time in […]

Hacker History sits down with Melanie Ensign and learn about how she got started programming church hymns into the home computer. Melanie's journey begins as wanting to study sharks and ends up doing hacker public relations. The interview has fantastic background noises from Melanie's home in Mexico. Come for the story, stay for the birds! […]

Hacker History sits down with Paul to discuss his hacker story. It starts with a home built Apple II clone in the Netherlands. We talk about some shenanigans during the university led to lessons about showing compassion to our fellow hackers. Paul even tells about the time he stood up to Scientology while running an […]

Hacker History sits down with Carfucar to talk about the history of car hacking. Carfucar was the co-founder of the Car Hacking Village and was one of the pioneers in the world of car hacking. We talk about how Carfucar got into hacking cars, what the early days looked like, and what car hacking looks […]

Hacker History sits down with Bill Degnan to talk about how he got into computers. Bill started out as as an ice cream man and ended up owning a vintage computer museum. Come for the ice cream, stay for the stories! Show Notes Bill Degnan Degnan Co. Consulting Kennett Classic vintagecomputer.net

Hacker History sits down with D1g1t4l_T3mpl4r to discuss his hacker story. We learn about how D1g1t4l_T3mpl4r got into hacking, what it was like for a Midwestern hacker in the late 80s and early 90s. We discuss phreaking, hacking, hardware, phones, culture, a message for the newest hackers among us, and more. Cyphercon presentation