Alec Petritis: Hacking

As a high-school hacker, Alec Petridis has made his mark on the local software development scene by approaching each challenge with an out-of-the-box angle.

Petridis attributes his hacking beginnings to his middle school experience in finding useful loopholes and workarounds. “I worked out a way to get lots of Google Home Minis for free,” he said. “My great plan was to sell them, (but the) problem was that no one wanted a Google Home Mini.”

In his freshman year of high school, Petridis found a place to apply his unique skillset in cybersecurity “capture the flag” competitions. When attending Carnegie Mellon University’s picoCTF competition, Petridis quickly discovered that he both enjoyed and found success in his collaborative hacking endeavors. “I’ve met a lot of great people on my team and I just have a lot of fun,” he said.

The current cybersecurity field doesn’t quite align with hackers’ binary presentation in media as either heroic internet vigilantes or disruptive evildoers. “There’s the whole white hat, black hat thing,” Petridis said. “It’s a bit much because nowadays, it’s a very gray area.”

Petridis’s work as a hacker has included competing in the CTF finals of DEF CON, one of the oldest and largest