{"id":220870,"date":"2026-03-07T05:14:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T10:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/07\/cybersecurity-executive-chaim-mazal-was-a-preteen-hacker\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T05:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T10:40:12","slug":"cybersecurity-executive-chaim-mazal-was-a-preteen-hacker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/07\/cybersecurity-executive-chaim-mazal-was-a-preteen-hacker\/","title":{"rendered":"Cybersecurity Executive Chaim Mazal Was a Preteen Hacker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cybersecurity Executive Chaim Mazal Was a Preteen Hacker<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/cybersecurity-executive-chaim-mazal-was-a-preteen-hacker-2026-3<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-07 05:14:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.businessinsider.com<\/a><\/p>\n

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 41-year-old Chaim Mazal, chief security officer of Gigamon, a cloud security company based in Santa Clara, California. This story has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

I got my first computer in the early ’90s when I was 8 years old and living in Florida. A few years later, I started hanging out in hacker chat rooms on a service called Internet Relay Chat. My parents had no idea.<\/p>\n

I was very taken by the hacker community. The people in these chat rooms talked about making programs to perform various tasks. It was a large community, and we would all share information. Some people in it helped me learn how to create internet utility tools, and not all of them were so great.<\/p>\n

For example, when I was 12, I wrote a program that could generate credit card numbers. I then used those cards to purchase commercial software and distribute it for free. It was the coolest thing that I could think of doing at the time.<\/p>\n

I didn’t get arrested, but some of my friends did. That encouraged me to change my trajectory.<\/p>\n

\n Every time Sarah E. Needleman publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!\n <\/p>\n

\n Stay connected to Sarah E. Needleman and get more of their work as it publishes.\n <\/p>\n

How my hacking background helped me<\/strong><\/h2>\n

After high school, I enrolled in a local community college to study computer science. However, I didn’t finish my degree until later in life because…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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