“Today’s ‘impossible outside of controlled lab conditions’ exploit is tomorrow’s cybersecurity headline”
Long before I wrote about security, I was a hacker. I first got involved with online communities, bulletin boards, conferencing systems and networks out of a combination of necessity and curiosity.
The necessity part is easy to explain: I lost a year of my life, and a whole load of rather important brain cells, in hospital courtesy of a nasty encounter with viral encephalitis in the 1980s. Before becoming a patient at world-renowned Atkinson Morley neurology hospital (which was involved in the development of the CT scanner) I had set out on a career in sports management. Upon my discharge, some 12 months later, I couldn’t read or write, had severe cognitive difficulties and had lost the use of three limbs.
Long story short, as my brain started to recover and relearn, my body lagged behind. I only left my specially adapted flat when picked up by the London Ambulance Service for my twice-a-week hospital visits. An Amstrad PCW connected to a modem the size of a shoebox was both my escape from this mundane and restrictive existence into a virtual world where I was free to explore with everyone else. Starting with FidoNet
