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Comment by spyremeown | Hacker News Reader

Definition of a script kiddie with too much time on their hands... I hate people like him. Could've done something good with his life (like getting into info/cybersec!).

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Tbf the average infosec job is writing lots of policies, checking to see if people follow them, writing reports, nagging teams to update their outdated dependencies, etc. Of course there are many types of infosec professionals and not all infosec jobs are like this, but i kind of doubt someone like this would be all that happy in an entry level infosec job.

That's why despite having some knowledge about infosec, I don't want to make it my job. Pentesting looks like fun, but the real job seems to be about writing reports, applying policies you know don't make sense and not applying policies you know make sense, and if you block something, you get yelled at because you blocked it, allow it and you get yelled at because you allowed it. This is the kind of job where you are given a list of a thousand software and dependencies, get asked about vulnerabilities, find thousands of them, look how relevant each one of them is, write a report about what needs to be fixed/updated, get told it is too expensive and that you should find a cheaper solution and half ass something that you know is both too little and too much just to fit the allocated budget.

> Could've done something good with his life (like getting into info/cybersec!).

Very likely no, he could not. Being able to harm people does not imply ability to secure systems. Nor ability to learn advance tech while we are at it. Nor ability to obey contractual limits if you are red team.

And it would be pretty idea to employ person with such a bad judgement in any of those positions anyway.

> like getting into info/cybersec!

I'd argue that's exactly what he did. He's just gone for the Mitnick method.

Mitnick was (is) great at social engineering. This dude is just an a-hole.

Mitnick was asshole too.

I have some sympathy for Mitnick. My understanding is that most of the damage he caused was due to opportunity cost and direct costs of catching him, at a time when a direct path into a security career was less obvious.

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