Episode 20: Thots on Hacker Farm

Jonathan Tomek, co-founder of Chicago’s THOTCON, joins me on this podcast to discuss threat intelligence, ham radio, and what it’s like to run a hacker conference and the genesis of THOTCON. We talk about how he’s gathered threat intelligence data through Iranian hacker groups. We discuss QRP records sending messages thousands of miles with very low power. He shares a hilarious anecdote about how Michael Goetzman (organizer of CypherCon) hacked THOTCON for a lifetime badge. We touch on Samy’s project OpenSesame, where he reprogram a kid’s IM-me texting toy to open most garages. Jonathan talks about his dream of one day running a hacker farm. We talk about that common thread in the hacker mentality to get out and do something fresh from the ground up. Enjoy the podcast with Jonathan Tomek and feel free to say hi to him on Twitter @sakebomb.

About the Author
Kyle Puckhaber has a wide background from mitigating cyber-security threats, business to politics, and everything in between. He loves navigating through chaos to find customized solutions to problems. He is the CFO for the cyber-security startup Deeplight Systems. He is a philosopher at heart. As a contrarian, he questions conventional wisdom and experiments with alternative approaches to traditional problems. He enjoys travelling, the outdoors, and finding wisdom in travelers and nature. The first podcast he hosted is called Seeking Truth, which is an effort to find truth through the dialectic process.

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