Samy Kamkar
Hollywood, CA USA
"In technology, if you can show the output, no one is going to question anything else."
Career Roadmap
Samy's work combines: Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Working Independently
See more careers and stories that connect to your interests.
Take Roadmap Quiz
Day In The Life
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life has been direct
1.
When he was a child, his mom bought him a home computer, and he started hanging out in chat rooms.
2.
One day, someone in a chatroom made his computer crash; after he was done freaking out, he thought, “That was so cool!” and became obsessed with hacking.
3.
When he was 15, he dropped out of high school and his mom made him get a job; he started writing and selling software from home.
4.
When that job no longer interested him, he left to co-found his own company, Fonality—he was 17 years old.
5.
Two years later, he wrote the infamous “Samy worm”; the worm spread to over one million Myspace users in 20 hours, making it the fastest-spreading virus of all time.
6.
The Secret Service raided his home and confiscated his electronics; a court banned him from technology for three years.
7.
Says he never wanted to be malicious about hacking; he was more interested in finding and using computer vulnerabilities in new ways.
8.
He now alerts companies to any vulnerabilities that he finds in their products so that they can fix them and improve consumer safety.
