My journey into hacking began when I was around 10 years old, starting as a script kiddie in AOL and AIM chat rooms. I spent countless hours in these digital spaces, dominating scramble games and other activities hosted by chat room moderators.
Becoming a Victim First
My introduction to the world of hacking came through becoming a victim myself. I fell prey to a malicious binary file generated by Sub7, one of the most notorious Remote Administration Tools (RATs) of its era.
Sub7 was a sophisticated RAT featuring an elegant graphical interface that enabled hackers to perform various intrusive actions on compromised systems: opening and closing CD-ROM drives, sending print commands, flipping desktops, toggling keyboard lights, disabling keyboards, displaying full-screen matrix-style chat interfaces, and deploying keyloggers. In those days, before widespread adoption of wireless routers and network security measures, anyone connecting to the Internet was directly exposing their system ports to potential attackers.
From Victim to Script Kiddie
Fortunately for me, the individual who compromised my system chose to be educational rather than malicious. After having some fun at my expense, they explained exactly how Sub7 worked. This discovery got me hooked and led me to target other users in AOL and AIM chat rooms. The prevalent "send 2 receive" culture of picture sharing made social engineering really simple—many users couldn't distinguish between executable (.exe) files and legitimate image formats (.jpg/.png), making it effortless to trick them into opening malicious "picture.exe" files.
I never cared about finding information on people's computers, I was just curious to know if I could even get access! This curiosity drove my fascination to new heights.
The Wake-Up Call
This phase of my digital exploration continued for several years until an important encounter changed everything. During a conversation with a girl in one of the chat rooms, she casually mentioned that her father was a police officer. The discovery hit me with immediate terror. I vividly remember the panic that hit me as I quickly unplugged every piece of computer and internet equipment in my possession. That moment remains clear in my memory. Though no consequences ever materialized from that encounter, the fear was enough to make me abandon Sub7 entirely and redirect my curiosity toward learning legitimate programming skills.