Boy Wonder: Youngest Certified Ethical Hacker

by Jordan Yerman | February 10, 2008 at 09:51 am

789 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

A UK teen named Shane Kelly has found that his penchant for taking things apart will lead to permanent job security: as long as business is conducted online, companies are going to need real security experts: people who know how to break what companies build.

It took Kelly about 10 months to complete the course work and pass the four-hour test required to get the accreditation. That included a five-day boot camp.

He recently landed a spot as a temporary worker at the University Birmingham, where he expects to do IT-related work. He's considering acquiring additional accreditations for Cisco and Microsoft technologies.

But eventually, he says, he plans to do security work.

"Due to my age, it's probably not going to happen in the next five years," he says. "In the industry, you need to have a certain amount of experience. I hope to see myself doing security work of some some sort."

This guy's like the Doogie Howser of hack:

The Certified Ethical Hacker course usually requires students to be at least 21 years old, yet the teen who attends Solihull College said he turned to computers after contracting diabetes and encountering problems at school.

"This qualification proves your knowledge of attacks and how organisations can defend themselves - hackers can cause incredible damage to companies. I think I've put all my problems at school behind me. I'm a lot happier now," he said.