A professional hacker has revealed how much he made in his younger, (not much less innocent) days.
At the very young age of 9, Ryan Montgomery got into the world of computers and never looked back.
His curiosity led him to dig deeper into how they worked and at aged 13, he joined a hacking group.
In an interview on Valuetainment, Ryan talked about how his early fascination with hacking and scams helped him make quite a bit of money.
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'At maybe 12 [or] 13 years old joining a hacking, or affiliate marketing/hacking group called Digital Gangster,' Ryan described.
He mentioned that this group included some high-profile hackers who had hacked celebrities and big companies. One of which was YT Cracker (Bryce Case) who hacked US space agency NASA.
Ryan then went on to become an admin of the group.
'Back then, it was like the Wild West,' he explained.
Before the days of a junk mailbox or spam filters, members of the forum would 'send out a URL to a million people' and 'collect commissions from affiliate networks.'
Essentially, these links would trick people into buying fake products, and the hackers would earn commissions from them.
Some commissions would be as little as '$9 per sale', Ryan stated.
He continued: 'So, we would combine hacking methodology and affiliate marketing and that's the short version of what Digital Gangster was.'
When asked by the host what was the most money he ever made from one of the email marketing campaigns, he responded with a jaw-dropping figure.
'Without going into the specific details of what and how, I would say $30,000 in a day,' Ryan admitted.
Now, it begs the question where does a 13-year-old put that kind of cash? Or even, what does 13-year-old Ryan do with that kind of money?
'I had a PayPal account that got banned and then [used] my moms,' Ryan said.
In fact, she was fully aware of what Ryan was up to but knew he had a 'good heart' and trusted he meant no harm.
Back then, it was easier to hide behind fake profiles and aliases, and cybersecurity software wasn't so much a big thing as it is today, so his activities didn’t attract much attention.
Ryan learned a lot from those days and has earned the title of '#1 ethical hacker.'
Today, he uses his skills to help catch online predators and raise awareness about the potential dangers of online gaming and the deep web.