The late 80's and early 90's played a pivotal role in the forming of the Israeli tech scene as we know it today, producing companies like Checkpoint, Waze, Wix, Mobileye, Viber and billions of dollars in fundraising and exits. The people who would later build that industry were in anywhere from elementary school to high school, and their paths included some of the best hacking stories of the time (certainly in the eyes of the locals). The combination of extremely expensive Internet and international dial system, non-existent legal enforcement and a lagging national phone company could not prevent dozens of hungry-for-knowledge kids from teaching themselves the dark arts of reversing, hacking, cracking, phreaking and even carding. The world looked completely different back then and we have some great stories for you. We will cover the evolution of the many-years-later-to-be-named-Cyber community, including personal stories from nearly all categories. Come listen how the Israeli Cyber "empire" was born, 25 years ago, from the perspectives of 2:401/100 and 2:401/100.1.
Inbar has been reverse engineering for nearly as long as he has been living. It started with a screwdriver, pliers, wire cutters, and his grandfather's ECG machine, and gradually transitioned into less destructive research. In 1984, aged 9, he started programming on his Dragon 64. At 13 he got his first PC - Amstrad PC1512 - and within a year was already into reverse engineering. It wasn't long before he discovered how to access the X.25 network, Bitnet and Fidonet, and through high-school he was a key figure in the Israeli BBS scene. Inbar spent most of his career in the Internet and Data Security field, and the only reason he's not in jail right now is because he chose the right side of the law at an early age. In fact, nowadays he commonly lectures about Ethical Hacking and Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure. Inbar specializes in outside-the-box approach to analyzing security and finding vulnerabilities, and is currently the Principal Researcher at PerimeterX, researching and educating the public on Automated Attacks on Websites. @inbarraz https://www.linkedin.com/in/inbar-raz-90a7913/
Eden Shochat builds stuff, most recently Aleph, +$330MM venture capital fund; The Junction, voted #1 startup program in Israel; face.com, a massive face recognition API acquired by Facebook; Aternity, the leading user-centric enterprise IT platform, acquired by Riverbed; and GeekCon, Europe's biggest makers conference. Eden grew up in Nigeria, where he was bored into assembly programming for the Z80 chip, graduated into the demo and cracking scenes while being thrown out of high-school but ended up being a (somewhat) productive member of society. @eden https://www.linkedin.com/in/edens/