[Zarathu]

When I was 11 I grabbed a small book on Visual Basic so I could write a keylogger to steal my sister's AIM password. It was fun, learning about how to use the WinAPI and various other components, even though I didn't really understand the abstract concepts behind it.

I did VB, ASP, and dabbled with the .NET framework until I was about 14, which is when I started to get into languages like Java and C.

After studying Java for a couple years, I started learning about buffer overflows and shellcode, so I did x86 for about two years. At that time (I was 16), I had a job for a VoIP security company in Texas, and I published various exploits for VoIP phones. I think I was 17 when I gave a talk on overflowing SIP at Toorcon and Blackhat.

I did PHP and Perl for about a year after that, but I dropped that pretty quickly when I found out about Ruby and Python. I'm running several web-based startups now, and I love it.

I'm currently 19.