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  • This is a classic Nissan Skyline.

  • It might look like just another car,

  • but owning one of these

  • makes you an instant star among car enthusiasts.

  • And this guy's so rich, he owns two of them.

  • He affords these luxuries not by toiling away

  • at a nine to five job like the rest of us,

  • but by breaking into websites and getting paid for it.

  • My name is Tommy DeVoss and I'm a hacker.

  • The businesses Tommy hacks

  • are headquartered in cities like New York and San Francisco.

  • But Tommy works out of suburban Virginia

  • and when I went to go see him over the summer,

  • he was crashing at his mom's place.

  • Her kitchen doubled as his office.

  • Most of the time, if I tell somebody I'm a hacker,

  • the first thing they say is either,

  • "really" or

  • "no you're not because real hackers

  • don't admit that they're hackers."

  • Do people think that you do it for bad reasons?

  • Yeah, people like ask me,

  • "hey, I think my boyfriend's cheating on me,

  • can you help me break into his phone so I can find out?"

  • But Tommy's not gonna

  • break into your boyfriend's phone

  • because all the hacking he does is legitimate.

  • In arrangements called Bug Bounty Programs,

  • companies like Verizon and General Motors,

  • pay him to look for security holes in their systems,

  • so they can fix them before the bad guys get in.

  • When you find one of the ones that you know

  • is gonna be like five or $10,000 payout,

  • it's just, you can feel your heart racing faster

  • and it's just like doing drugs.

  • I don't want to go too into detail on...

  • In comparison with that,

  • it's just, you get that same sorta rush.

  • For some time now,

  • tech companies have employed legitimate hackers

  • to test their systems.

  • But over the last decade or so,

  • bug bounty hunting has become much more organized,

  • thanks to the merchants of websites

  • that match freelance hackers with businesses.

  • The prize money has now gotten big enough

  • to make this an actual career.

  • What's the most money you've made on a bug?

  • A single report is $20,000.

  • What about in a single day?

  • A single day,

  • $160,000 in October of last year

  • and I think that only took

  • three or four hours worth of actually working.

  • So if you were to average it out,

  • how many hours a week would you say you work?

  • Five to ten.

  • Five to ten hours a week?

  • And how much money have you earned over the last year?

  • This year?

  • $636,000.

  • What do you think is the thing

  • that makes you so good at it?

  • Just the fact that I've been doing it for so long.

  • I thought Tommy was gonna be

  • something like a lawyer or a doctor.

  • Tommy was very, very smart.

  • And he was so much ahead of everybody else in the class.

  • In our classes, you could play on the computers

  • when you finished all your work.

  • I'd finish my work in 10 minutes

  • and then just go play on the computer.

  • It didn't take long for Tommy

  • to fall in love with the Internet,

  • and one day he stumbled into a chatroom

  • where people talked about their illegal hacks.

  • They taught him their tricks

  • and he started hacking for fun.

  • The first time he got caught was when he was in highschool.

  • He was expelled, spent a few weeks in juvenile detention

  • and was ordered to stay away from computers.

  • But he didn't listen.

  • We got into NASA computers,

  • the US Courts, Department of Energy,

  • anybody that had huge budgets

  • that shoulda had secure systems but didn't.

  • And he was caught, once again,

  • but this time, as an adult.

  • Most of these right here, I got in prison.

  • I got prison bars there,

  • razor wire, a guard tower.

  • I've got the word hacker on my stomach

  • and then VA.

  • In federal prison, everything's geographical

  • and I was from Virginia, so.

  • Tommy served a total of

  • about four years behind bars.

  • The judge told me, if I get arrested for computers again

  • and come to his court, he was gonna give me life in prison.

  • And in 2010, right before his 27th birthday,

  • he got out for good.

  • For a long time, the only jobs Tommy could get

  • was cooks, working in restaurants,

  • that was about it.

  • Nobody would hire him because he was a convicted felon.

  • But by 2016,

  • a few Bug Bounty programs were up and running

  • and Tommy gave it a try.

  • He explained it to his mom like this,

  • I get to hack again.

  • People were gonna pay me instead of sending me to prison.

  • She didn't believe me.

  • She was like,

  • "are you sure you're not gonna get in trouble?"

  • He's been in trouble three times for this

  • and how am I supposed to know

  • that he might not be tempted to do something again?

  • For most people,

  • bug bounty hunting is still more of a side gig

  • than their primary source of income.

  • You get paid only when you're the first to report a bug

  • and even those payouts don't amount to very much.

  • On one platform, called HackerOne,

  • the vast majority have earned less than $10,000 over time.

  • But if you're really good, you can make a lot more.

  • Out of HackerOne's 5000 contributors,

  • Tommy's among just six people who've earned

  • more than a million dollars.

  • So this is where all your money goes?

  • Yeah.

  • My insurance appraised it at $89,000.

  • You know your mom told me not to do this.

  • Oh God!

  • Oh my God!

  • The way this car vibrates,

  • it does not feel safe to me.

  • It's not vibrating.

  • Tom still gets the occasional speeding ticket.

  • Oh God.

  • But when it comes to computers,

  • he says he'll never cross the line again.

  • Can I have a hug?

  • The prospect of spending the rest of my life

  • away from my daughter,

  • there's nothing that can make that risk worth it.

  • You're gonna drive with daddy, okay?

  • She's now the most important thing in the world

  • instead of me.

  • You gotta push the button to start it.

  • Ready?

  • Turn it this way.

  • I wanted her to be a hacker

  • but her mom wants her to be a dancer.

  • There you go.

  • I just think it'd be fun for me and her to hack together.

  • Turn it this way a little bit.

  • No the other way,

  • don't run into daddy's car.

  • Please don't hit daddy's car.

  • Please don't hit daddy's car.

  • There you go.

  • Good job!

  • She'll get anything in the world she wants.

  • Pound it!

  • Pound it.

  • It's gonna really end up costing me a lot more,

  • so I kinda have to hack a lot more I think

  • as she gets older.

  • As more and more of the world moves online,

  • cyber attacks are only gonna grow

  • in frequency and sophistication

  • in the havoc that they'll wreak on our lives.

  • And that means were gonna need

  • a lot more of the good kind of hackers

  • testing our systems to make sure we're safe.