How did everyone start out?

[Exitrial]

I am a student in high school and I was just wondering how everyone got intersted in computer security and where has it taken them, whether good or bad. I just kind of fell in to wanting to learn about this stuff a few months ago. I was a summer camp counselor and a friend showed me Linux on a laptop and gave me my very own copy of it and told me it was more secure than Windows and I should try it. From there I started reading and ended up here after a while.

Exitrial

[thread_killer]

I was in the Army. I planned on making a career in the Army. Then my knees started going bad and I had to get out. Well, I only knew how to do three things. Kill people, blow things up, and tattoo. So I planned on tattooing. Well, my wife found a good job in another state and I said "I'll just follow you, I can tattoo anywhere." Unfortunately for me, the state had very unusual laws concerning opening a tattoo shop and I now had no plans and a family to support. The local college was offering networking classes so I signed up. I've had a computer since 1982, so I was pretty comfortable using them, and compared to the average user, fairly knowledgeable. I thought it would be a snap. Anyway, I took a job installing CAT 5, fiber, and phone systems to pay the bills. The work sucked but we usually ate. The company I worked for wanted to get into wide area networking and I was the only one stupid enough to go out and get all the required Cisco certs for us to become "real" Cisco vendors. I found out I really dug the IP stack, and have for a few years now, followed anything at layer 3 and layer 4 religiously. Now.....I'm getting tired of spending my days writing ACL's for Pixes so I started moving towards the total security concept, and not just the building the castle walls. My present obsessions are port scanners and intrusion detection. Especially snort.....I love snort.

[ShagDevil]

Exitrial, I got into computer security by accident. yeah, I said accident.
I was searching the web one day, one of my keywords happened to be Anti (I was actually looking up anti-terrorism I think) and in my results, popped up this AntiOnline. I even hesitated to click on the link but curiosity prevailed. After viewing a couple topics I realized the potential of AO and never left. I learned just about everything I know about security from this site. Before coming here, the only thing I new about security was Anti-Virus related.
I knew nothing of ports, firewalls, proxies, scripting.....nothing.
Yeah, scarey right? considering I was running a local LAN for a small engineering firm...
I now realize that I was basically running a sufficient, well organized LAN..with one small problem...anyone could hack into it.
well, hindsight is 20/20 they say.
anyways, that's how I got involved in security..by total accident

[variable_node]

Seems the next logical step, not wanting to be boring, but have been networking for 3 years, designing web sites for 2 years, writing small, very bad VB apps for 18 months, absolutely love protocols and the way they work.

The one area I am lacking is security.

Put a WIDE open Win2K box on the 'net and watched. Within 2 hours someone had got control of the machine, discovered they were using DameWare but wasn't sure what else I could do or how exactly they had used it. Bought a book, go this link and signed up about 3 days ago!!

I've already learned a few things, get a *nux box, learn C, and ask questions!!

The next few months should be fun!!

"variable_node"

[Spyder32]

My "entrance" into Computer Security came when I was on a chatroom called "ChatPit" and I was talking to a lot of people, making friends. A few of these people called themselves "Hackers" (which at the time, I knew nothing about) and were making threats (yeah, kiddies pretty much). So, they DoS'ed me offline, and I gre curious as to what they did and how. Before you know it, I was learning about everything involving Computers. That's my story, a little weird, but it's the truth.

EDIT: Oh crap, I just noticed this is my 400th post! Yay for me!

[HTRegz]

Well.. Computer security .. it's kinda just been part of me since i started into computers..

I was given a tandy 1000 in 1995 I believe it was and started playing with it.. having only experienced computers while at school and at friends..

When I got my first computer "real" computer i got on the net, and onto IRC.. first hanging with friends and then roaming. It started with a Warez channel some friends ran.. and then i found #hackers on newnet.. from there i discovered Click, Devine intervention and a few others and needless to say I was a packet monkey for a while.. then after about a year in windows someone said hey try linux, so i threw it on.. found more scripts there.. ping -f and such, but I decided i wanted to know more and be able to develop my own attacks and such. so i started studying how programs worked and why they worked.. working with programming, and basic net apps. and things just went from there.. My HS offered the CCNA courses.. and now here Iam in aNetwork Admin program.

[|The|Specialist]

I got into AO out of a stroke of bad luck. I guess my luck really changed though. When I was in the 1st grade I had a real mean teacher so I failed and ever since then I've had trouble paying attention... when I was in the 5th grade a kinda quit school and stayed at home.

I didn't like learning things unless there were no peaple there to bother me or if it was a hands on experiance. I learned things on my own for awhile then my mom brought home all of her old colledge computer books. It was mostly books on VB, web design, and networking. After reading all of those books I became a computer junkie. A friend of mine called me and said that if I was gonna get a job then I should get into security because thats were all the "fun" is so I google search the word computer and the word security... and nearly the whole page was covered with the name AntiOnline.

Over the years it was weird though cause even when I didn't know crap about PCs or how they worked I still managed to love everything about them.

Hummmm.... hopefully I can get a GED then turn this hobby into a job.

[Dahvid]

I was in computer class in high school when one of my mates showed me how he had access to all the teachers files on other drives etc i thought he was very smart ( just turned out to be mapping network drives no biggy heh).
I used to chat on icq to my mates at school (including the one mentioned above) when he introduced me to IRC. i downloaded mIRC and it automatically connected me to DALnet. i asked him where he chatted and he told me to join #hackers on dalnet so i did (after about 10 minutes of figuring how to heh). I did that for about a year while i was going to school and **** just outside of when i was doing other stuff.. then i got a job and did about 6 months on the job computer training ( in various different areas )


I know almost have my CCNA and do everything from fixing computers (helpdesk & sysadmin) to setting up WANs and LANs.

( i use WinXP and Slackware linux (dual boot) on my box at home and hope to soon get a MAC)


I used to come to AO when it was only a newssite (not a discussion board) years ago, then when it first turned to a discussion board i left and came back just recently

[jxrry59]

# years ago an exgirlfriend had a mac that kept crashing then the new g4 then i bought a gateway then i got a trojan and virus which i removed myself(3days) and I do nothing else now but learn about networks, security and other related subjects -and i went back to school-i learned more here in 3 weeks then i did in 3 years(maybe because i had the general knowledge) but a legitimate question brings a legitimate response in 2 minutes-enjoy the journey

[Cyb3RSoldi3R]

I started off with a 75 Mhz mac, a 28.8 kbps modem and a desire to piss off my friends