Robert Schifreen - biography

Robert Schifreen, the author of Defeating The Hacker, is a classic "poacher turned gamekeeper". During the early 1980s he was an active computer hacker. In 1985 he exploited information that he found on the British Telecom Prestel computer system and managed to discover the system manager passwords.  Armed with these, he was able to log in as any of the system's 50,000 customers, including His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Shortly after this, Robert was arrested and subsequently became the first person in the world to be tried by a jury in connection with computer hacking.  At the time there was no specific legislation that prohibited hacking in the UK, so he was actually charged with forgery.

He was ultimately acquitted on all charges, which resulted in a change in the law.  In the UK, the Computer Misuse Act 1990 now outlaws unauthorised access to a computer.

Robert writes and speaks on IT security at seminars and conferences around the world, and has appeared on radio and TV as an expert spokesman around 100 times in the past 6 years.

To find out more about Robert's security awareness training workshops, click here.