I can go into LinkedIn and search for network engineers and come up with a list of great spear-phishing targets because they usually have administrator rights over the network. Then I go onto Twitter or Facebook and trick them into doing something, and I have privileged access.

You can't go to Windows Update and get a patch for stupidity.

I saw myself as an electronic joy rider.

It's true, I had hacked into a lot of companies, and took copies of the source code to analyze it for security bugs. If I could locate security bugs, I could become better at hacking into their systems. It was all towards becoming a better hacker.

No way, no how did I break into NORAD. That's a complete myth. And I never attempted to access anything considered to be classified government systems.

I'm still a hacker. I get paid for it now. I never received any monetary gain from the hacking I did before. The main difference in what I do now compared to what I did then is that I now do it with authorization.

I characterize myself as a retired hacker. I'm applying what I know to improve security at companies.