Women in Information Security: Avi

Last time, I got the opportunity to speak with Diana Initiative founder Virginia Robbins, otherwise known as fl3uryz. She deserves all the kudos for her hard work in promoting women in our industry.

This time, I had the pleasure of speaking with Avi. They’re not a woman, but they certainly know what it’s like to be a gender minority in tech. Avi has a self-educated hacker background that really impresses me.

Kim Crawley: Hi Avi! Please tell me about what you do and how you got there.

Avi: I’m currently a developer, crypto nerd, and lockpicker. I got access to my first computer with a printer and floppy disks when I was 3. I wasn’t supposed to be on it, but I managed to find my way onto it, typed random sentences in, and fell in love with the sound of the printer printing on the continuous dot matrix paper. Once I got introduced to the internet when I was 5, that was it. I was already a fast typist, told everyone online I was 17, and that’s really when I first began poking around, eventually getting into coding and finding bugs in places. Physically, I was also poking around, opening doors with bobby pins starting at 6 years of age. TOOOL is a major part of my life now unexpectedly, but I did resist for a while on officially joining. Cryptography, or at least ciphers, I didn’t get into until around and after my first DEFCON in high school. My first DEFCON also influenced me to get into digital fabrication for electronic design and production, computer-controlled machining, and embedded programming.

KC: Oh wow. I’ve written for 2600 Magazine, so I can say with some authority that you have the background of a really badass hacker. (Read more...)