I’m reading the excellent Blackhatonomics right now. And one thing I read in it reminded me of a question that someone asked me last year. I was probably the third or fourth guy with an advanced security certification he’d met, and he asked me one day what it is that keeps us from turning criminal.
I said, “Well, for one thing, good guys have much longer careers.”
I didn’t cite a specific example, but Blackhatonomics cited the case of Albert Gonzalez, the infamous hacker convicted of breaking into TJX, Dave & Buster’s, and others. His crime spree, which ended when he was captured in 2008, netted him $2.98 million.
He was convicted in 2010, and had to give back what was left of his fortune, and now is serving 20 years in a minimum-security prison.
I like my approach better. Read more

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
