🟢 How to WORK as an ETHICAL HACKER? 🔐 WORKING as a PENTESTER 🔥 LATIN AMERICAN HACKERS

What does a magic trick have in common with a security audit? More than it seems, and to prove it I cross the pond and sit down with Alan Levy, alias El Mago, who boasts of having the two finest professions in the world, pentester and magician.

Alan has spent six years as a pentester at an Argentine consultancy he set up with two friends, and he saves the magic for weekends. We go over what a pentester really is, the difference between that and an ethical hacker (he explains it to me with MacGyver, able to build a bomb out of a pen), and the qualities you need, starting with English. He tells me how he once hacked a client during a simple phone call, attacking the business logic, and why he prefers the teamwork of pentesting to the loneliness of bug bounty. We also talk money without any pretence, with Argentina’s inflation as a backdrop, and about the facial paralysis that stress brought on in 2019.

Out of that comes an idea I share, you need a hobby away from the keyboard, something unplugged, because burning out is easier than it looks. He also leaves a solid list of resources to get started, from hacksplaining to the Web Security Academy.