As a two-decades-long ‘hacker’, I am humbled by A.I. every. single. day.
I started hacking things around the globe when I was 13 years old. The internet was there, and there were no cybercrime rules or regulations where I was living. The playground was just there. I was having so much fun without understanding the mayhem I was causing somewhere.
Then I learned that my hobby, my obsession with hacking, was someone else’s nightmare. I made a promise to myself that I was going to do this only, but only, for good purposes. Later, I learned it was called white-hat hacking.
In my first year of uni, I became a co-founder of a threat intelligence company, started reaching out to fellow hackers, and brought them on board. Then I found myself teaching hacking skills for free. Teaching the right way to those coming down the same path made me so happy and satisfied, and I did it for years and years.
A few years ago, I realised that everything I had done was about chasing an environment where I could carry on hacking, which is only possible as long as you learn new things every day.
The /loop of my life is quite simple. I stumble upon a new technology, product, car, UAV, or even vessel during my day job, somehow end up finding critical 0-day vulnerabilities in it, and responsibly disclose them to the vendors and affected parties without expecting anything in return.
That is my moral code and me trying to be completely honest with myself, which doesn’t mean it is right for everyone. But it is right for me. I do everything in my power to get these findings fixed, even if it requires me to send people InMails on LinkedIn! The moment I am sure they have received the details, it is on them. Not me anymore.
The environment I have built for myself over the last 15 years has become a place where I was usually the one teaching or leading in the uncharted fields of vulnerability research. It was so much fun and fulfilling at first, but then it started to feel a bit lonely.
Years passed. I encouraged many of the people I met to explore vulnerability research, and I learned from plenty of brilliant researchers along the way. Still, in my day-to-day work, I began to miss the kind of environment where I could regularly be challenged, surprised, and made to feel like a student again.
Then something magical happened.
Player A.I. joined the game.
It is the best peer-hacker friend I could have ever imagined. It knows everything better than me. It is a bit delusional, but exceptionally good at vulnerability research, reverse engineering, and the things I have been slacking on learning.
But more importantly, it brings more of the environment I had been missing into my everyday work: one where I can be challenged, inspired, and, more accurately, mesmerised by what emerges from the collaboration.
I am not sure how to explain the feeling, but it has made my wildest hacking ideas much easier to pursue. It can save me days and nights of wrestling with a local research environment, and when I get stuck on unfamiliar bits and pieces, it switches into teacher mode and helps me build the understanding I need to keep going.
This is not only happening to me. It is not only the security industry that is experiencing the same vibe. It is happening everywhere!
But the problem is that no one is really talking about their experience of the AI-enabled world they are living in. Back in the late ’90s and early ’00s, we were all sharing our experiences, and mostly our failures, on hacker forums and mIRC channels.
I was even teaching complete strangers how to perform SQL injection attacks in a freaking Guild Wars 2 guild chat box. And yes, the same guild and the same people are still playing together on Ruins of Surmia.
I realised there is no such A.I. community where it is not the knowledge or the marketing being shared on stage, but only the experience gained while engineering with AI.
Bilge, Ayse and I kept looking at conferences and coming to the same conclusion: ‘I don’t think I’d get much out of this one’ Either the content was all about how successfully someone had done something, organized by a companies focused for sale, or the tickets were too expensive. As we talked more about the kind of event we wished existed, it became clear to us that:
- It is time to kick off a brand new community around pure technical A.I. engineering
- It is time to organise the biggest community-driven one-day conference.
- It is time to make it affordable to everyone. Yes, you hear me right! Our tickets are €5 only.
- And it’s time to create an environment where I will be inspired by all the brilliant engineers again!