It was quite late in the evening and I think I was the only person in the office.

And so all these flags popped and they showed and I was starting to get really excited

and maybe even dance like in the office by myself.

I was smiling excitedly and yeah, it was a really, really nice moment.

This is Ophir Arpas, a security researcher at Gard Decor.

Unlike some of our previous guests on My First Hack, Ophir didn't get into hacking when

she was a teenager.

She was already working in tech after studying computer science when she got curious about

reverse engineering, the art of analyzing and deconstructing software to understand it.

Her first hack was to reverse engineer the classic Windows game,

Minesweeper. Her goal was to force the program to put flags on all squares with mines, as soon as

the board shows up. This essentially makes it incredibly easy to beat the game. That exercise

changed their life.

This is Lorenzo Franceschi Bikirai, and this is my first hack,

a series that details the origin stories of hackers and security researchers.

Hi Ophir, welcome to the show.

Thanks for joining us.

How are you today?

I'm great.

Thanks, Lorenzo.

So, yeah, I'm excited to learn about your first hack.

And I guess let's get on it.

...