[Estragon]

Not to mention, it must be humiliating for HBGary to be thought of the world as hackable by a 16 year-old girl.

[jrockway]

Why? Kids are smart and have time. 16 is not that young. I knew how to do SQL injection and buffer overflow exploitation at that age, although I also knew not to use those skills against someone who didn't ask for it.

Basically, everyone is excited because she's a girl.

[chc]

As one or two articles have pointed out, that kind of skill is generally lacking in girls in our culture. So it is somewhat noteworthy, I guess.

[nostrademons]

Her father is a software engineer, though. It's much easier to learn pretty high-level skills in a field when you're young if you have a parent in that field.