The "missing link" correlating furries (and trans women) with hardcore programming and is autism (and related conditions).
Autistic people tend to be very good at this kind of work, and are also more likely to find the social dynamics of these particular groups welcoming rather than off-putting[1]. You find the same overlap to a lesser degree with competitive Pokemon, LOTR, retro gaming tech, political extremism or other autism-adjacent interests.
[1]Many Autistics trend to feel much more comfortable being in groups where people don't adhere properly to social norms, because it means they're not going to be singled out and ostracized.
My hypothesis, based purely on personal experience and what friends have told me. I am not a furry.
I feel like infosec was one of the earliest "no one cares who you are if you have skills" user groups. Online, you were just a handle. Man, woman, both, neither, no one knew until if/when you met up IRL. Until then, all you had was your reputation. I think that led to people having a pretty good idea about the attitudes of people they were talking to online, staying away from people who were going to be jerks about identity or pastimes, and a lot of conversations like "General Mayhem is weird, but he's our weird, so no one mentions that fox tail he wears everywhere."
Over time, that was a positive feedback loop: people who weren't cookiecutter felt safer around infosec folks than most other crowds. => That increased the "weird density" of infosec meetups. => People who don't like being around uncommon appearance or behavior stayed away from infosec meetups. => Those meets became safer for uncommon folks. => Repeat.
I don't know if that's right, but again, that's what friends have expressed to me before. It seems plausible.
Note: When I say weird, I mean it affectionately. I've never met anyone in infosec who didn't have some quirk not far below the surface. Frankly, I love that. And because of that, and the virtuous circle I described, I've never had one single person in infosec confess to me that they weren't OK with gay or trans or furries or other type of behavior/identity/etc. I'm a straight white middle class dude, and unfortunately I have had people confess such things to me in other circles, mistakenly assuming that since I was in their demographic, I'd agree with them or at least be OK with it.
The visibility is a huge part of it. It signals "it's okay to be yourself here" when most professional life, even in tech, is dominated by keeping up "professional" appearances.
That makes sense. And I do strongly believe in the "virtuous circle" bit: people who aren't OK with others being themselves tend not to feel comfortable at, or get invited back to, events. That would make it more comfortable for the next event's attendees, making it less pleasant for the remaining pains in the necks, and so on. I've participated in conversations like:
Q: Why do rightwing websites keep getting hacked?
A: Because none of the best infosec people want to work where their friends wouldn't be welcome.
You seem to misunderstand the logic flow of why the right-wing bigots' infrastructure is repeatedly getting hacked.
They don't get hacked specifically because of who they treat poorly, but because the very people who they treat poorly won't work for them. The subset of the population of whom they are publicly abusive and disrespectful is over-represented in the top performing defensive programmers.
point A > They wont hire from this subset of the population - which excludes a significant portion of infosec top talent. The neurodivergent talent pool that is adjacent to that subgroup, which itself may not be the direct targets of the abusive behavior is also over-represented in the top talent pool is less likely to feel comfortable supporting these clients.
point 2 > The remaining talent pool is thus a less concentrated distribution of top performing infosec professionals. Not that any individuals in this group are less capable in particular, but that the mean distribution of capability is somewhat lower in the remaining group.
point D > Hackers are prolific and adept at finding the least secure aspects of infrastructure, by definition. The concentration of talent in the hacking community probably follows the same distribution curves. This creates a subset of hackers with a motive to target both the less well prepared organizations, and have a negative opinion of those less prepared organizations with a history of abusive behaviour towards groups with which the subset of high performing hackers strongly identify or associate.
> Bigots, racists, far-right-wing Republican organizations get hacked. [Perhaps more frequently - unsubstantiated]. Apparently, because the outcomes of self-identification as intolerant asshats makes their specific infrastructure both an easy target for hackers of any orientation, and a preferred easy target for hackers opposed to bigotry, racism, and far-right-wing Republican organizations.
That's exactly right. Between us, I don't understand furries at all. It doesn't remotely interest me and I can't really even imagine being interested in it. And that's OK! Someone else being into it doesn't harm me in any way. If it brings someone else joy, I don't have to understand it. I'm just glad my friends have a fun thing they enjoy with their other friends.
That matches my experience (also not a furry). But there's also a whole additional layer of offsec being (by definition) "doing things you're not supposed to be allowed to do", which has obvious parallels with people who enjoy breaking social norms. I think some people just get a rush from the "transgressive" nature of both circles.
That's possible, too. There's not a lot of respect for arbitrary rules that don't seem to clearly benefit any legitimate purpose, and people don't tend to limit that thinking to one arena.
I think it's partly also about what you see first.
It's far easier to be transphobic / racist / furry-phobic if the first thing you notice about a person is their gender / race / furriness.
If you are that kind of person, you immediately get into the mindset of "what they're saying isn't worth listening to because they're a <slur>, and <slur>s can't be smart by definition." If you first meet them online, you picture them as smart in your head, before you learn that they're black / trans / furry. When you do learn about that, you already think that they're smart, so it's much harder for your brain to dismiss them just because they're something you don't like.
The "missing link" correlating furries (and trans women) with hardcore programming and is autism (and related conditions).
Autistic people tend to be very good at this kind of work, and are also more likely to find the social dynamics of these particular groups welcoming rather than off-putting[1]. You find the same overlap to a lesser degree with competitive Pokemon, LOTR, retro gaming tech, political extremism or other autism-adjacent interests.
[1]Many Autistics trend to feel much more comfortable being in groups where people don't adhere properly to social norms, because it means they're not going to be singled out and ostracized.