gattin' lols

This is a good summary of the LIGATT saga thus far. Basically a guy who once went to prison for wire fraud now markets himself as the “World’s Number 1 Hacker”, despite the fact that his case didn’t really involve any sort of network intrusion from what I can tell. According to Errata, he obtained toll free phone lines, resold them, and never paid AT&T. Since then he’s effectively marketed himself as a hacker in order to peddle security services. I have no problem with that, Mitnick does the same thing. If someone is too stupid to figure out you are actually full of shit then they deserved to get robbed.

So his business is based out of Atlanta, and despite both living in Atlanta and being a Padawan learner in the local InfoSec community, I had never heard of Mr. Evans until a couple of weeks ago when all this hit the fan. Even though the Exotic Liability guys said that Atlantians can’t read (whatever, I know they love our strip clubs), Atlanta is one of the nation’s security hubs (only behind DC & Boston, I think. Thanks ISS!) and we have an awesome local InfoSec community.

InfoSec guys, on average, tend to be smart motherfuckers. I consider myself quick on the uptake, but I am literally humbled daily by the people in my industry. The guys I work with alone are geniuses, and the people involved in the Atlanta scene, in general, blow me away (miss u Martin+Andy). I consider myself so lucky to have all these super smart people around me. Even more impressive is the way the community will take people in, accept them and offer guidance, without judgments or caring what you know, as long as you’re willing to learn and do the work.

The real error he made was trying to “hustle” (his words, not mine) the InfoSec industry, instead of just the retarded members of the media. See, in business and sales, you can be full of shit. In fact, the friends I know in those industries seem to make more money the more full of shit they are. But that doesn’t fly in our business. You need to know your shit. Your commissions and numbers don’t matter, we are a people with a knowledge based economy.

So Greg Evans has been telling the truth about one thing. He is most definitely a hustler. While it’s probably not true that he’s making the millions of dollars he claims (I know a couple people worth 1m+ and the richer they are the less they seem to want people to know it), I’m sure he makes a living due to his marketing skills. And so does the guy by the MARTA station hustling bootleg DVDs. And just like him, Evans is really good at selling cheap, shitty versions of original content made by others. Evans has as much claim to the “hacker” title as that guy has to the “director” credit of this shaky cam edition of Toy Story 3 I just bought.

I’m not going to address his claims of being the only black InfoSec guy at conferences because it would just be me naming all the black people I know in the industry and that’s pretty fucking stupid. Just take my word that he’s not. I’m not even going to delve into his bogus charges of racism either, but suffice to say thatEvan’s use of a white girl’s picture as the avatar for an article “attributed” (the article was actually stolen) to a black researcher who works for him is by far the most offensive form of racism I’ve seen in the community during my 3+ years as an engineer.

Sage

goes

in

all

fields

with regards to LIGATT. Except on twitter, because this shit is still hilarious.

Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler