A. I am very glad to have made the transition. I enjoy contributing something to the public. It is actually not that uncommon for a hacker such as myself to turn, and many hackers are turning to a lawful life. In response to the second part of your question, working on the other side is much the same as what I was doing before - the biggest difference being that I am now doing it legally. And yes, there is a lot of speculation from my competitors in the security field, many of them do not trust me because of my past.

The thrill of hacking is still there, finding weaknesses in a company's firewall still gives me that kick, however I am doing what I love, and I am now doing it to help people and companies, instead of merely for my own gain.

Q. You are coming to a security event later this year. Is there any particular message you hope to leave with your audience? Any key points/issues you think administrators should look at?

A. Well, I hope to leave South Africans with the message that they need a meaningful and secure system - and want to concentrate on the 'human factor'.

The human factor is that even though an administrator can have a very secure network, the employees could inadvertently give access to a hacker. One such way is through 'social engineering', which basically means the hacker gains the user's trust by posing as someone such as an administrator, and asking the user to log onto some Web site and download a 'patch' which actually turns out to be a key logger. I also want to highlight the security aspects of the wireless network.