Hacker History Podcast

Hacker History sits down with Michael Lenz. Michael started out in the Commodore 64 era with the usual games and BBS where many others started. His story takes a really interesting turn when he gets himself into infosec (before it's called infosec). He builds a SOC and eventually a SIEM. Before both of those things […]

Hacker History sits down with Jeff Man. Jeff is a legend in the security universe having worked for the NSA, Tenable, and a longtime host of Paul's Security Weekly podcast. We learn all about how Jeff ended up at the NSA, how the NSA started to red team, and why many things are the way […]

Hacker History sits down with Bill Bernard. Bill tells us of his time building and breaking things with his father. The days of TI99 and Apple IIe in school, and some great engineering in college. Bill has some pretty cool experiences working for Zenith, then the phone company trying to sell TV, and a Cable […]

Hacker History sits down with Rebecca Jones. We learn of Rebecca's journey from using early Apple computers, to an early Windows machine, to eventually her current role dealing with security and identity. Rebecca explains how she stepped away from tech for a while due to some horrible advice. Along the way she picked up some […]

Hacker History sits down with Luke McOmie, AKA Pyr0, to talk about a new conference about hacker history, as well as his history. Pyr0 tells us all about NaClCON. It's a conference dedicated to the stories of the hackers themselves. Go register if you're interested ... while you still have time! Pyr0 then tells us […]

This is a packed episode where we talk to Laura Scherling, Ben Schmerler, and Rachael Tubbs about some hacker history, some hacker future, and the ten year anniversary of the IoT Village. We talk about the importance of cybersecurity education, the innovative efforts of IoT Village, and some awesome stories from Laura's book. We discuss […]

Hacker History sits down with David Bernstein. We learn about David's past in emergency management. David has seen a ton of wild events, and has some really interesting commentary about how emergency management and infosec collide. David isn't what many would consider a traditional hacker, but it's clear he has had incredible impact over the […]

Thug Shells is a freestyle rapper who hacks the english language, making it do whatever she wants. Did you know a group of rappers is called a cypher? It's a super fun conversation where we learn a lot about Thuggy as well as how rapping works, and all the uncanny connections to the world of […]

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 Harish Pillay and hear about his journey. We start with curiosity that leads to hardware and ham radio. Eventually Harish is a graduate student and received a tape from the Free Software Foundation. We hear some stories about the early days of free software and how Harish was involved. We […]

Hacker History sits down with Abe. We hear about Abe's younger days in rural Canada. How he accidentally ended up in the Canadian army, and got to help work on a program in the army hosting capture the flag events. He eventually comes the head of security for a large Canadian city, which was full […]

Hacker History sits down with Lars Wirzenius. We hear about Lars growing up in Finland and the unique Swedish computer he started using. The GNU Manifesto changed his life. Lars witnessed the birth of Linux and helped fix some early issues. Started using Python back in 1993. He became a Debian developer, founded a backup […]