ethicalhack3r

[Interview] Rob Loos – ‘Students in Security’

We have decided to start interviewing people in infosec to talk about various security topics. Our first ever interviewee is Rob Loos!


Rob Loos is a Belgium Applied Computer Science student at KHK Geel Belgium University who has a massive interest in the security world and loves to get other students involved too.

Questions:

What started you out in information security?

I’ve always had an interest in computers, playing games, writing a few small programs and helping other people out. As many security people I enjoyed the forums a lot and got in contact with people who’s hat were pretty far from white. I got a lot of blackhat knowledge that way, even tough most was pretty scriptkiddy. I got experienced with malware, remote administration and some webapp exploiting. Its a lot of fun but not something that can get you a good future.

So with the start of college, I started learning more about programming & networking. That gave me the knowledge to really understand whats going on. Too bad we don’t get security courses. So most of my security information comes from the Internet in many different ways : podcasts, blogs, whitepapers, testing applications (like DVWA).

How did you find out about BruCON?

At my college we got a project week and one of the events was an webapp pentesting workshop (basic sql injection & cookie fun). But the person presenting it is a member of the Belgian OWASP and he told us about BruCON. Ever since then I’ve been interested and as soon as tickets were up I grabbed one.

Which was your favourite talk & workshop? Why?

The best talk I saw was “Rage Against The Kiosk”, it was pretty simple but fun and the speaker was great. I wish i could have gone to the 2nd day and watch “Red and Tiger Team”.

I also went to the lock picking 101 workshop. I loved it, it’s kinda easy to get started but hard to master. A perfect skill/hobby for any hacker if you ask me.

Was BruCON your first security conference?

Yes it was. It’s hard to find people interested & serious about security (a lot of people still think of hackers as evil people). But when I saw BruCON and read a little about it, I was convinced this is what I needed. A great gathering of intelligent & fun people.

Will you be attending next year?

For sure!! but this time I’m gonna get a cheap hotel room in Brussels, I am currently also working on my students in security project & I hope to give small (lightning) talk about it next year.

Tell us a about your ‘Students in Security’ project:

I got to a school with general IT (information technology) students. So security isn’t part of my curriculum, some of my friends are interested in security but they know nothing about it. So when they (or anyone, this has probably happened to most security people) say “oh wow, teach me!!”. So I started my blog and added the basics of security in “Getting into security”. Just to make a reference for my friends/fellow students. But I want to do more on this.

Basically the idea is an OWASP-like organisation but not just for web applications and mainly focused toward to academics. I wanted to start this as a mini local hackerspace/security group JUST for students at my college and see where it goes. I might still do that but start of the school year madness is keeping me from that. But it would be a lot nicer if we could just make it global and maybe have small groups for colleges/local communities.

I’ve not done much yet but I’m looking for people who are interested in setting up something like this. Please get in touch!!

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Blog: http://www.robloos.be/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/RobLoos

Posted on 6 October, 2009 by admin