I feel like my entire life has been a series of hacks.

You know, I hacked together a career.

Most of us of a certain generation had to.

There were no formal education and no formal job roles.

If we call the Tetris hack my first hack, how did it influence me in my career? It really is a testament to, you know, my playful nature and the fact that many hackers still do this kind of thing

for fun.

Hello, cyber listeners.

This is Lorenzo Franceschi Bikirai, back on the host seat for another special episode of My First Hack.

Today, we're talking to Katie Musuris, a pioneer in the field of bug bounties.

She's the founder of Luta Security and has previously worked for at-stake, Semantic and Microsoft.

Just like many others, Katie's first foray into the world of hacking involved a video game.

In her case, Tetris.

Let's hear the story from Katie herself.

Hacking to me has always been about exploring your curiosity, and it doesn't have to always be with a

computer. It just happens to be with a

computer half the time that I do it. But, you know, I had been programming since I was eight years

old on a Commodore 64. And so by the time I got to high school, you know, I could program in a

couple of different languages. Back then, you know, it was basic and Pascal and

C and that kind of thing, although I hadn't learned C yet. You know, they didn't start teaching C in my

high school in computer science classes until after I graduated. So that's kind of how, what era I

belonged to in computers. What happened was they had Tetris installed on all the

PCs in the computer lab and we were lucky in my high school. You know, this was late 80s, early 90s.

...