Who’s Johnny?
I’m a Christian, Hacker, Author, Pirate and Ninja.
Hacker?
As a kid, I used to stalk the neighborhood after dark (well, after dusk anyway) like some half-height cyborg ninja version of James Bond.
I would hop my fence, slip silently past my neighbor’s snoozing dog and hop onto the roof of their wooden shed, armed only with a pocket full of custom (Lego) spy gear and my electrical-tape-and-dowel-rod “sword”.
I would wait on that roof for hours (minutes), pressed flat and listening, tuning my ears to the sound of the night, knowing that my equally silent and skilled enemy was out there somewhere doing the same thing. I imagined we were both competing for the same prize: access to a highly secured and super-secret computer system.
Flashing forward fifteen years, very little had changed. I was lying in the dark listening to the night sounds, but I wasn’t on my neighbor’s shed. I was lying under an oil tanker inside an undisclosed military testing facility. The pack on my back held a dizzying array of high-tech gear, designed to slice through the toughest military computer security systems. Squinting against the rain, I could see the “enemy” patrolling in a white Jeep, but he was far from imaginary. His military training and weapons were very real and very deadly. As he passed by, a bright red dot illuminated the ground three inches in front of me. Chris and Jim, the other two members of my Strike Force team were ready.
As they emerge from the shadows, I make my move as well. The facility would fall that night. We got in, got access to the network, pilfered their data, and got out undiscovered.
The job of a professional hacker is simply amazing. I’ve spent the bulk of my career breaking into networks, bypassing firewalls, slipping past guards, and talking my way into places I didn’t belong. It was a great job, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wanted recognition. In 2003, one of the best ways to gain that was by landing a speaking slot at DEFCON, the world’s largest and most infamous hacking conference.
Christian? Author? Pirate? Ninja?
I landed that slot at DEFCON 11, and for me, it was the height of my career. I was excited at the possibilities, convinced that somehow this talk would open a new door to the next level, something that would even trump my already-stellar career. The talk was mediocre. I didn’t get invited to any parties, and the press hardly noticed. I did meet Jeff Moss (founder of DEFCON and BlackHat), and that was a highlight, but during our brief encounter he chuckled at the irony of the “Hackers for Jesus” booth being placed next to the “Hacker Porn” booth, and that unsettled me.
See, I inherited Christianity from my parents. They raised me properly, but for whatever reason, it never clicked for me. But something about those guys in that “Hackers For Jesus” booth really bugged me. I just couldn’t bring myself to laugh at them, becuse deep inside, I was one of them. DEFCON 11 was seriously depressing for me. I mean really depressing. So much so that despite everything I had going for me (a great job, an amazing wife and three amazing kids at that time) I committed an odd form of suicide. Sometime shortly after that DEFCON, I really lost it. I had gotten to the top of the mountain and didn’t like what I saw. I decided I wanted nothing to do with hacking or technology or anything. I said a simple prayer and turned over everything to God. I remember saying “God, if you want to do something with my job, my website, my skills, whatever, do it. I’m done.” I posted on my website that I was “a hacker and a follower of Jesus“.
God did something, alright. Syngress Publishing contacted me (not the other way around!) and asked if I’d be interested in writing a book on Google Hacking. Within a year, I had written my first book. My website climbed from 500 users to over 80,000. The media frenzy was unprecedented. One CNN gig turned into several. Then came CNBC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, PC World, Wired, The Register, Slashdot and too many others to count. The Google book turned into twelve more book projects (including two best-sellers), and that dinky DEFCON talk turned into a speaking career that took me around the world, blossoming into a string of talks (“Hollywood Hacking”, “Death by 100 cuts”, “No Tech Hacking”) that simply crushed. Achieving super-stardom, I began to truly relish my “Rock Star” status, and even sought to add on a few more titles. Hence the pirate and ninja bit.
I learned that I was a descendant of Captain Sir Henry Morgan, “one of the most notorious and successful privateers [...] and one of the most dangerous pirates that lurked in the Spanish Main.” (Wikipedia) That secured the pirate lineage. Then my wife and kids and I began studying Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, the unarmed combat method of the ninja in 2005, which landed me the title of ninja. There were lots of reasons why I started (and continued) training but I have to admit, the title was appealing as it added to my already burgeoning image.
None of this was the result of my efforts. It came about because God answered my simple prayer. It was “Sure, OK. You want me to do something with you? I will.” The best I had been able to accomplish on my own was a lousy talk at DEFCON. But when I took the back seat to God’s plans, he made me a superstar.
But I took my eyes off of him, and began to focus on myself and my fame. It was a great ride, but looking back I should have known I was setting myself up. But things didn’t fall apart in the United States. They would start to unravel in Africa.
Why Africa?
When my wife Jen went on a mission trip to Uganda, Africa in 2006, she brought back pictures like this one:
I had seen poverty in magazines, but this was different. These kids were dirt-poor. They had one set of tattered clothes (if they had clothes at all), many of them didn’t get a single meal in a day, and most of them had lost one or both of their parents to HIV/AIDS. Despite all this, they were happy. I don’t mean like clueless happy, I mean really deep-down happy. They had Joy. That bugged me. I had so much, but I was miserable. So when Jen went back to Uganda in 2007, I went with her. That journey is chronicled here. I did computer work in Uganda. I didn’t even know Uganda had computers. My work there affected me. I repaired old computers so that children and adults could learn computer skills since a single computer job can support four or five families. I became increasingly disappointed by the computer garbage that had been donated and how ancient it was. That got me thinking about why this was. My personal upgrade trail in the U.S. was so much nicer than this stuff. I cleaned viruses off of machines that were eating spreadsheets that held sponsor information. When a sponsor database gets clobbered by a virus, kids don’t eat. It may sound extreme, but that’s how it was. By battling anti-virus, I was saving lives.
When I returned from that trip, I lost the desire to build my image and further my career. That trip was the start of a change for me. I still loved technology and hacking, but I had discovered a Godly direction, passion and use for my talents and skills. (James 1:27) I felt it was time to be about something bigger than me. I founded Hackers For Charity (HFC).
What happened to your old site?
Interesting question. As I started rolling with Hackers For Charity (HFC), I was on the right track but eventually it became a challenge for me. Get that? For me. Forget the amazing empowerment I had personally witness when I let God take the lead, I pushed hard. I lost my focus for a while, and eventually the money from the No-Tech Hacking book which fed children in Kenya became nothing more than checks from our account to theirs. That life stream became digits; a binary stream in some bank system.
When Jen left for a three-week trip to Uganda and Kenya in December of 2008, something began stirring in me and through an amazing series of events I quit my job of 12 years, picked up a job that didn’t pan out and found myself unemployed, all because of the passion I felt about making a difference in this world. My dream was to share the feeling I had with others and engage them in the most fulfilling work I had ever experienced. But I felt lost and displaced somehow. What would this next phase of my life look like? How would I get there? I needed a new website, but struggled with how to migrate my old stuff to the new site. That’s when I lost the web server that housed all my sites. Just like that. Hardware failure. Backups too. I was back to ground zero. I panicked, but then Jen came back with photos and video of our food program in action.
Suddenly, it struck me. We were feeding children. These weren’t digits in a bank account. That was food, and through book sales, we were saving lives. I felt suddenly relieved, and felt the weight of my web server loss lift. I was starting over, leading with God, passionate as ever about technology and hacking but on a mission not only for the vulnerable in East Africa but also for the hacking community that wanted to connect with something bigger than all of us. So this is it. Welcome.
What’s this about moving to Africa?
It’s true. I’ll reveal more about that in a bit, but for now, let me just say that on June 15th, my family and I will be relocating to Uganda Africa for one year to follow God’s leading and see what’s next for us, and for Hackers For Charity. This “Long Journey to Africa” has been four years in the making, and we’re excited to see what’s next as we seek to learn more about the people and the needs present in East Africa. We want to know that the efforts we put in as a family, and as an organization are having a culturally relevant impact there. But, since I’m now unemployed (primarily as a result of my passion for our work in Africa) this journey is being done on 100% faith. We don’t know where our living expenses will come from, and we’re not sure exactly how we’ll survive there. But God has been faithful to us, and in the past the hacker community has stood by us financially, making a bold statement that there is a great deal of good in our community, despite what the press has said about us. So please consider supporting us in our journey. See our support page for some suggestions on how you can partner with us in this work.
The story is outlined in a bit more detail in this nice article by Tricia Bishop.
