Hacking is a mindset: Ethical hacker Josh Klein

Josh Klein is an “ethical hacker,” whose greatest joy is derived from combining the unexpected and coming up with better and even more unexpected results.

He was trained, both formally and informally, in hacking — social systems,  computer networks, institutions, consumer hardware, animal behaviour, and, most recently, the television industry. Klein speaks to Puja Pednekar during his visit to the city.

The term “hacking” brings to mind a negative connotation. What, then, is an “ethical hacker”?
Hacking is a mindset. It’s a way in which you have a natural curiosity about the world, look at systems and see if you can pull them apart, reassemble. For example, hacking was first used around cars. The exhaust had a glass, and if you broke the exhaust glass, the compression would not be that good, but the car would make a nice “grrr” sound. This is a hack, because it is not what the system was designed to do. They bent the system for a desirable effect. For me, this is the kind of view with which I see the world.

What are some of the out-of-the-box solutions that you have come up with?
If you are curious and interested in educating yourself, you can change things. For example, I made a vending machine that trains crows to pick up money that they find on the street and put it in a box, in exchange for a peanut. But this is crazy right? Well, the point is, change amounting to US $650 million gets lost on the streets in the US alone every year. Another point is that expanding cities are all the time trying to kill these species; we are breeding them to be parasites.

What kind of opportunity do you see in India, and how different is it from the States? Do you think Indians are ready for hacking?
There is massive potential here if both the government and the corporate sector can grasp the opportunity. What’s happening now in India, with the rapid growth, rising middle class, increasing education and technology expansion, there is so much opportunity for anyone in India to grasp this opportunity of global commerce and entrepreneurialism and make a big difference.