“When I was a black hat hacker, I was isolated and paranoid,” he wrote. “It felt amazingly good to work with great people, to be part of a team solving a big problem. I realized I could make a difference using my technical skills.
Lichtenstein, who did not immediately respond to Arce’s request for comment, said he was sentenced to 60 months in prison and “almost [four] For years in some of the harshest prisons in the country.” While in prison, Lichtenstein says he spent as much time as he could reading mathematics books in the prison library to keep his mind occupied and distracted from his surroundings.
The 38-year-old said he was “released from home confinement earlier this month.”
Convicted hackers cooperating with federal authorities or turning their lives around is not without precedent.
A notable example is the late Kevin Mitnick, who was convicted in several phone and computer crime cases in the 1980s and 1990s. Mitnick eventually started his own security consulting company and remained a penetration tester and public speaker for several years before his death in 2023.
“Now the real challenge of regaining the community’s trust begins,” Lichtenstein concluded, noting that he wants to work in cybersecurity.
“I think like an adversary,” he said. “I’ve been an adversary. Now I can use those same skills to stop the next billion-dollar hack.”
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