We've hired more people off HN than from any other vector.

www.matasano.com/careers

(Or, you know, ask Stripe for a job. I'm sure they're hiring too!)

(Or, you know, ask Stripe or Matasano or Tinfoil Security for a job. They'll pay you far more than you'd ever get from Tarsnap's bug bounties.)

A lot of people have fun with this kind of challenge, as well as network security in general. Over 10,000 people went to DEFCON this year (I've seen estimates between 13,000 and 16,000). Hacker IRC rooms are constantly buzzing. Security is fun, and while building software is immensely satisfying, so is breaking it.

So why is the information security industry so tiny?

For one, it's competitive, but I think that many, many qualified security guys don't realize that there's a thriving industry around this kind of stuff.

If you want to work in security, these CTF-style challenges are a great way to show that you're self-motivated and clever. I'm always hiring application security engineers, and honestly it's pretty difficult to find people who are new to the field. People seem to either have a decade of experience and bounce from company to company, or no experience at all and assume that they "aren't good enough."

If a company can't take some raw talent and refine it, they don't deserve raw talent in the first place. We call that training.

If you like this kind of stuff, apply at Stripe, or Matasano, or Tinfoil Security -- or even my engineering team at Redspin. If you mention "HN" or "Hacker News" in an email to jobs at redspin.com, I'll know exactly where you came from :)

PS: Redspin hires all kinds of security engineers, from policy & procedure specialists to network infrastructure guys to appsec experts. It's better to apply and have a conversation than to be too afraid to try!

https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/jobs

(Or, you know, ask Stripe or Matasano for a job. They're both crazy awesome, have a ton of respect from me, and are also hiring.)

Anyway, love the challenge, the attention to detail is awesome :)

Would love to sit down with it for a bit longer and crack on.

I think if they didn't provide code, it would have been really difficult. Is everyone feeling same way?

> $url = "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/ . "Question_mark_alternate.svg";

can't someone edit the image on wikipedia and change the image displayed to everyone else here -- or is the wikimedia image system only accessible by admins?

Is this not dangerous?