Ben Lincoln - About This Website

Ben Lincoln

I'm a professional security consultant/penetration tester.

I've worked in the technology industry since 1994, when I was in high school and got a job doing Macromedia Director work for a small company in my hometown which produced multimedia CDs.

I've also worked as a UI developer at an internet startup before they were called "dot-coms" (Intermind), a systems admin for a student newspaper at Simon Fraser University (where I studied electronic music composition), and a systems engineer at a retail corporation in Seattle. In 2011 I moved into information security, and in less than a year decided I wanted to specialize in penetration testing. In the summer of 2015 I earned an Offensive Security Certified Professional certificate, and I highly recommend the Penetration Testing with Kali Linux course which leads up to it.

A few months later, I also obtained GXPN (GIAC Exploit Researcher and Advanced Penetration Tester) certification. I recommend SANS SEC660 (the course which covers the material in the exam), especially if you can take the course as taught by Stephen Sims. I had to let the GXPN cert lapse in 2019 because the total cost to renew it would have been too much for me to pay out of pocket :/.

Aside from my duties as a computer nerd, I like to explore the real world, which you can read about in the Drives section. I enjoy a lot of music - particularly industrial, darkwave, and metal.

I have four tattoos - a barcode on my right forearm, Kain's clan symbol (from the Legacy of Kain series) on my left upper arm, Schröedinger's wavefunction equation on my left forearm, and the symbol I designed for myself^[1] on my right upper arm. I think of them as reminders to myself and advertisements to others of particularly strong aspects of my personality - I am very interested in science (and particularly the eerie aspects of quantum physics), I am clearly particularly fond of Legacy of Kain, and was strongly influenced by cyberpunk fiction like Neuromancer and Blade Runner.

Speaking of books, I quite enjoy William Gibson (particularly the aforementioned Neuromancer), Greg Bear (especially Anvil of Stars), Neal Stephenson, Alastair Reynolds (probably the best modern hard science fiction author), Pat Cadigan, and Bruce Sterling. For non-fiction, I recommend David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality and anything by Brian Greene.

A Few Photos of Me

2002

2004-2006 (Photo by Peter Kwon)

Exploring Ape Cave in 2005

2006

At Yellowstone's Wraith Falls in 2006

In 2013

In 2014

I put on my wizard coat and staff (2015)

Footnotes

1.	The heavily-abstracted "three stone towers crossed with waves" symbol you'll see now and again on this site — see What Does This Symbol Mean? for more details.

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