My name is Gavin Sottnick. I am 22 and I am a United States Veteran. I currently work as a car salesman and I love everything cybersecurity and red team related. When I was 15, I had really gotten into computers. I have always been really well verse with computer tech since I was a young child. When I was in 6th and 7th grade, I figured out how to use the IMAC’s in our computer tech room and how to use a terminal to connect to computers and make them speak out loud. That is the earliest memory I have of starting to get into so called “Hacking”. Soon after that the school had replaced all apple computers with chrome books. They started getting tighter on computer security and blocking websites that had video games on them which at the time is what I wanted to do…play video games instead of doing school work.
I figured out how to run a proxy to get around the schools website black list, and that may have been what really sparked the interest for me to start perusing a Red Teamer career in the Computer Tech Industry.
When I was 15 I attended a summer program at a local private college that is main focused on Cyber security blue and red teaming. Their summer program included an introduction to Linux, Raspberrypi’s Telnet, SSH, and they even had a CIA agent stop by to talk about his job in the government as a cyber security specialist. I excelled through the class having already knew majority of what was being taught.
They held a CTF event and at the time i did not have the knowledge to do well in that event, but luckily no one else did either. I ended up shutting down the target machine on accident and they stopped the event after that, I wish they let us get a second chance at it.
The coolest part about that program was that they gave me and award at the end, because I had presented a project on drone hacking and controlling drone with a terminal. I did a live demonstration during the class explain exactly how everything worked and what was going on. It was a surreal moment for me at the time.
Soon after that I had a large period of time not perusing cyber security because my parents took my computer since I would never leave my room. Up until earlier this year I had just been the “Fix my computer” guy for pretty much everyone I know, now I am pedal to the metal on cyber security just like before! I have relearned all the info I used to know back then and so much more already in the less than a year i’ve been back into this. Cyber Security is my passion and I can not see myself doing literally any other job outside the IT realm.