When you hear somebody's a hacker, your mind could go to several places.
You might imagine somebody in a secretive lair working to break into a corporation or government's security system.
Or alternatively, you might envision some guy in his basement trying to get in your mum's Facebook with a dodgy link.
Either way, a lot about this line of 'work' is shrouded in mystery.
Advert
And 'ethical hackers' only muddy the water even further. It might sound like a bit of an oxymoron.
When they put so many people through grief or financial hardship, how can hackers be ethical?
Well, their primary goal is to help companies and organizations improve their own security measures. They'll essentially be given permission to hack a company's system in order to expose the weaknesses.
Ryan Montgomery is one such ethical hacker. A self described 'Child Safety Warrior', he dedicates his resources towards protecting unsuspecting internet users from the dangers of the internet.
But in his former line of work, he wasn't always acting in such a noble manner.
While being interviewed on the Shawn Ryan Show, Montgomery opened up about his biggest regret.
Before stipulating that he was limited in what he could divulge, the hacker went on to discuss a previous job he'd taken on.
He said: "There's a rap song that mentions me.
"I hacked a ton of computers where I could infect computers with malware.
"I infected a ton of computers."
When his interviewer asked for an exact figure, Montgomery replied: "Thousands. Probably tens of thousands."
Ryan responded: "So these computers were mining cryptocurrency and going into your account?"
"They were going into a pool," Montgomery explained, "The reward is split based on the contribution.
"So if you're contributing twice as much as me, you'll get twice as much of a profit."
If it was such a moneymaker, why did he stop that line of work?
Montgomery said: "I have morals."
Fair enough.
When not discussing his previous exploits, Montgomery was shedding light on the Dark Web.
He said: "You could go to a thing called the hidden wiki and the hidden wiki will show you all different categories of these websites with a link to them and there's marketplaces, there's horrible things on there for kids.
"Even like murder for hire, there's counterfeit money, there's fake IDs, you know they're all kinds of different websites that do horrible things."
The internet really is a scary place - thank God there are cat videos on here to make it bearable.
Topics: Technology
Ben Thompson