Explore where it all began, interviews with retro hackers, the pioneers and forefathers of yesteryear. The true old school hackers amongst our societies have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. We will dive into fascinating stories that made hacker history.

New episodes release most months.

Join us at the next CypherCon - Milwaukee - March 30/31, 2023 

Our Recent Episodes

The history of Steve Ragan

June 2021 / Josh Bressers /
Hacker History sits down with Steve Ragan. Steve tells us about his early years of computer games, hacking, warez, modems, and dumpster diving. He eventually ends up as a security journalist and now is responsible for the yearly State of the Internet report. Show Notes Steve Ragan State of the Internet report

The history of Melanie Ensign

June 2021 / Josh Bressers /
Hacker History sits down with Melanie Ensign and learn about how she got started programming church hymns into the home computer. Melanie's journey begins as wanting to study sharks and ends up doing hacker public relations. The interview has fantastic background noises from Melanie's home in Mexico. Come for the story, stay for the birds! […]

The History of Wolfgang Goerlich

May 2021 / Josh Bressers /
Hacker History sits down with Wolfgang Goerlich. We learn about the importance of having root and admin when becoming a hacker and how truly important it is that we have patience and empathy for one another. We also learn that skateboarding in a datacenter doesn't actually work. Wolf's Twitter War Games bottlecap

The history of Bitterman

May 2021 / Josh Bressers /
Hacker History sits down with Bitterman. We start our story with computer classes at school. We learn about Bitterman's many hacks to solve problems, and we learn about how Bitterman became a creator of hacker puzzles that we now see at conferences. While he claims multiple times he's not a hacker, we learn that this […]

The history of Simple Nomad

April 2021 / Josh Bressers /
Hacker History sits down with Mark Loveless AKA Simple Nomad. We start our story by buying a bluebox from Woz and Steve Jobs. Mark picks up his handle from the supernatural. We learn of the time scanned the IP space of China to test a security scanner and gain some unwanted attention. Show Notes Simple […]