Syntax - Arrested Teenager to Motorcycle Racer To Pentester

Listen to the full episode here:
http://gettingintoinfosec.com

• Was arrested in High School for disclosing a vulnerability in the school IT system
• Syntax is an internal pentester for a large organization
• Went to college for Computer Science, but dropped out
• Inspired by the Movie Hackers
• First computer had a 1MB hard drive (Yes, not a typo!)
• Still went to Defcon even when he was not in IT or working in security
• Was a professional motorcycle racer
• Kept all his rejection letters as a way of motivation to keep going
• Had some business and entrepreneurial experience in the past, which helped him get back into the field
• Got back into security through… IT!

• "A lot of our time is spent arguing with the other departments and justifying our findings." [2:58]
• "Is this cross-site scripting really a problem."
• "I get stuck a lot… it's kind of the nature of the beast." [5:17]
• "I'm not going to work in tech again." [12:21]
• "You're a motorcycle mechanic… why should we hire you?"[19:07]
• "It's my hacker family. These are my people. Everyone in security, they make sense to me, cause they're all kinda like me." [19:41]
• "I kept getting this projects coming my way and I constantly said YES." [22:07]
• "Have you done this before… no, but I'll learn!" [25:06]"
• "No, this is website scraping… because I had that mindset… I was seeing it different than other analysts." [26:00]

• Syntax on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/syntax976
• DCZIA: http://dczia.net/
• Queercon: https://www.queercon.org/
• Outro Music: "Pure Decking" by Patient Zero from the album "Screen Saviour" her link is http://patientzero.bandcamp.com and she is @DoctorKraft on the twitter

Getting Into Infosec:

Breaking IN: A Practical Guide to Starting a Career in Information Security: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N15GTPC/

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