GRM n00bs was founded late one night in 2009 during the calm period of our lives between the Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition and graduation. Rob Fuller visited our cyber defense club and presented “Couch to Career in 80 hours.” That evening GRM n00bs was born as a blog/podcast/video series/foolery machine as we run the gauntlet from total n00bs to making it in information security. We are a group of information security professional recently released into the wild. Watch out.

Projects:

Podcast: When we remember we do a security podcast with topics we with will be interesting to others trying to make it in security including experiences at conferences and training events, competing in hacking competitions, getting certifications, etc. We also do an interview series with guests from the information security field with particular emphasis on their journey from starting out to where they are today.

Videos: We can a habit of video taping ourselves a lot. Videos of lap dances from famous hackers not withstanding, sometimes we release random footage. We also occasionally record an episode of Clueless User Training, which is a spoof of security awareness training videos they show at big companies. More video projects to come.

Tutorials/Blogging: Sometimes we rant, sometimes we show you how to use cool tools.

Members:

Georgia

Georgia received a M.S. from James Madison University in computer science emphasizing information security and secure software engineering in 2009. She is a survivor of Mary Baldwin College’s Program for the Erotically Gifted, graduating with a B.A. in Mathematics in 2006. While at JMU, she was captain for the cyber defense team, taking home 1st in the 2008 JMU cyber defense competition, 1st at the 2009 Mid-Atlantic CCDC qualifier, 2nd at the 2008 Mid-Atlantic CCDC regional, and 3rd at the 2009 Mid-Atlantic CCDC regional. She now serves as a red team member at competitions and thinks that its just as stressful as playing blue.
Since graduation Georgia has worked in vulnerability management for both the public and private sectors. She especially enjoys pentesting and forensics work when she can get it. Having a degree in software engineering, she enjoys coding small projects, in small groups, without methodology, and not in Java. She puts what little mathematics she remembers from undergrad to use as a hobby cryptanalyst.
When not hacking Georgia enjoys writing, photography, film making, and painting. If this whole security rock star thing doesn’t pan out she plans to be a novelist and obscure documentary filmmaker.

Rachel
Rachel is a scene whore.

Micheal

Rumor has it that Micheal was born in a secret underground bunker. Though he does indeed have a belly button, and he can’t hear the heartbeat of other humans 30 paces out, his mind is as sharp as a licorice snap’s bite.

When he grows up, he wants to be a pilot or a police officer. Or both. At the same time. Because he can do that, you know.

Micheal is currently living in the South Bay area in California and works for a company that performs vulnerability assessments for websites. His nickname is “guy who breaks things.” Not really, but it sounds very ninja-esque, doesn’t it? He’s very good at making websites behave in unintended ways.

When not working, he works on personal projects, which include building a small hacker space inside his even smaller apartment (yay for hardware virtualization!), coding tools for others to use, and composing music/playing the piano. He enjoys soccer and paintball. He wants to have a career in full-on penetration testing. His security background is in incident response/incident handling. He also likes writing incomplete/choppy sentences. Just to be funny. He also enjoys lockpicking.