Who IS he?

Podcast

Hey everyone, this is Leon Baburov and today, I traveled through the depths of the Internet and plunged into the hacking world. My interview was done on a hacker who preferred to be called “Johnny Quest.” I came across Quest in my search for a hacker to interview. He was by far the nicest person on the mass-internet-relay-chat server that the hacker channels were hosted on. I later found out that the server actually belonged to him.

My first question to Quest was a simple one: “At what age were you drawn to hacking?”
Quest said that it depends on my definition of hacking, so it was when he was either 12 or 16 years old.

This begged the follow-up question: “What do you define as hacking?” I asked this because everyone has their own, personal definition. Quest replied: “What is commonly referred to as ‘hacking,’ would be more accurately classified as ‘computer hacking.’ Social engineering is a type of hacking too, but it’s ‘people hacking.’ If you’re a really good mechanic, and can do crazy things with a car’s engine, perhaps you’d be an ‘auto hacker.’ What I would define as hacking very roughly is the search for a way to use things in unexpected or unplanned ways.”
Quest then proceeded to answer what drew him to hacking in the first place, especially at such a young age.

He really likes knowing how things work, and takes things apart in search of this knowledge. He likes puzzles and the reason what computers and computer hacking appealed to him so much was because they allowed him to do most of what he wanted for free, because it was all online. He could also work at his own pace, and wasn’t held back by a slow teacher or class.
When asked what he saw himself doing in five years, he replied very vaguely “probably more of the same: working and playing with my computers at home.” I politely asked him to elaborate, even though he was clearly trying to keep most of his personal life a secret to maintain his anonymous identity. He replied that he spends a lot of time on the computer – who could’ve guessed! He has around twelve computers and they require a lot of maintenance. He writes a lot of code just for fun, doesn’t play video games, and spends most of his time just experimenting. “I like puzzles.” He repeated again. “It’s like those kids who play with rubix cubes all day… all four of them. Writing code is like building with LEGOs though, and since I’m not doing it for school/work, I can do whatever I want: games, apps for personal stuff, hacking experiments. My biggest problem is that I don’t have enough time to do all that.”

Well, Johnny Quest was certainly an interesting individual, and one who I learned much more about from this interview. It gave me, and hopefully you guys as well, a different perspective into what hacking is about. Thank you all, and thank you, Johnny Quest for the new insights!