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Who is @securityintern?

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for:  The Security Intern Interview!

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Conducted over a couple of days by email (only because I didn’t think of one of the questions until the next day).  Hey, I wouldn’t do something this important in less than 140.



@securityintern

1.  How did you become the Security Intern?
I’d been a reader of Liquidmatrix for a long while and I know James Arlen personally.  Through him I knew that both he and Dave (Lewis) were going through a particularly busy/stressful period and neither had a lot of time to spend on the digest.  I put the first news digest together and emailed it anon to James.  I didn’t want him to feel obligated to use it, nor did I want to be embarrassed if it was complete shit.  I tagged it with a simple note: “If you do publish this, I’ll send another tomorrow.”  And so it began.  I thought that I’d do the job for a few weeks and then Dave and James would pick it back up and we’d part ways.  As it turns out, they like having me around.

2.  So, did you actually plan to be a mystery from the beginning on Twitter, or did it just kind of happen that way?
I started doing the news briefs in October and then Twitter in December, if I recall correctly.  Originally I was just going to use Twitter to promote the blog.  What I did not anticipate was the feedback from the security community on Twitter.  Most of it has been very positive and that part was very compelling.  I wrongly assumed that I’d sort of just be written off as the newshound.  The interest in The Intern was sort of exciting and then right around the same time, I started to get comments on the blog and some email encouraging me to continue.

3.  Did you hide your gender on purpose, or was it simply that everyone assumed you were male?  Or did you just try to be gender-neutral?
I tried to be gender-neutral in the beginning, people seemed to assume I was male.  I’m actually a Social Sciences student with a keen interest in Labour Studies and human behaviour is extremely interesting to me.  I suddenly found myself in the middle of a gender-biased experiment of sorts.  I also enjoy a fair amount of creative writing which fed right into this.

4.  What made you decide to “out yourself” now?  Was it simply that you were going to DEFCON and it’s pretty hard to hide your gender when you show up somewhere in real life?
There’s been nothing simple about outing myself.  As I stated, I really thought I’d fade into the woodwork after a few weeks.  One of my biggest issues was that people were really nice to who they think the intern is and I felt like I wasn’t being honest.  I know, a scenario I created myself.  Having said that, it was interesting to me how quickly this group of professionals, known to be cynical, paranoid and skeptical engaged with the intern.  DefCon seems to be the right time for this.  I am not a 19 year old male, surprise!

5.  What security work do you do other than the work you do for LSD?
Exactly none though I do know some of the basics thanks to a few years spent working at an ISP doing tech support and a bit of web design.

6.  WHERE did you get that AVATAR??
My first twitter avatar was the Starbucks logo which seemed appropriate at the beginning.  Then someone, I don’t remember who, began asking about what I looked like.  I hit the Google image files pretty hard putting in all sorts of search terms. “Intern” “security” “lackey”, everything I could think of.  And then there he was, smiling with his coffee pot and I could tell he was put there for me to find him.  The question now is… do I keep him?

7.  Does anyone outside of LSD get to know your real name?
One person found out who I am a few weeks ago.  I made a mistake when I changed the settings in my email account.  Rookie error.  One other person knows I am a woman, I told them a few weeks ago.  I was trying to gauge how people would react. That person gave me some sage advice, I gained confidence that day.

8.  Are there any other earth-shattering secrets that you’re going to hold back from us?
I have freakishly dexterous toes, I brush my teeth in the shower and my mother’s maiden name is… oh wait.  Not really, I’m pretty boring.

9.  Now that people are going to meet you in real life, are you still going to keep the avatar and mystery going on Twitter?
I honestly can’t answer that.  Given how wrong I’ve been up to this point, I’m not going to make any predictions.

10.  Are you really into Scarlett Johansenn?
She’s beautiful. I’m not sure if it’s genuine lust or I secretly wish I looked like her.

11.  And finally—does this mean our hot hookup is off for next year? 
Show up and find out.

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(I just hope @myrcurial doesn’t totally kick my ass—it was just harmless flirting, I swear I never laid a finger on her, man!)

Posted by shrdlu on Thursday, July 30, 2009
(3) Comments • Permalink •