In the back office of his father’s telecommunications business, something in five-year-old Ryan Williams initialized. Programming in BASIC on a Commodore 64, he typed endless lines of code from a magazine, waiting three hours for a Mandelbrot set to render pixel by pixel across the screen. He was disappointed with the result, but the process had already taken hold. Years later, Williams was setting up a Formula One driver’s party when his phone rang. Pack it down. COVID wiped out his entire music career, his production company, and $40K in a single moment. Everything he’d built over two decades as a touring DJ and musician terminated without warning.

By eleven, he was hacking payphones with McDonald’s straws and engaging in underground BBSs after answering questions about death metal. But music became his focus, taking him from classical orchestras to rock bands to DJ tours across Australia and overseas. It was a life of little responsibility and constant motion, until March 2020 forced a hard stop. At rock bottom, Williams enrolled in a cybersecurity course at a local TAFE college. He quickly realized he was ahead of his classmates, but that wouldn’t be enough among 12,000 graduates nationwide. So he went online, consuming everything he could while documenting his path as D8RH8R from the hills of Victoria. Now he works as a lead security engineer at Applied Computing Technologies, breaking AI models deployed in critical infrastructure. He runs Smart Security Solutions, publishes HVCK Magazine, builds offensive security training, and operates Solo Hobo, providing pro bono assessments for organizations with no budget. The man who once lived for sold-out shows now works in the quiet RF spectrum of Victoria’s hills, pushing physics-based AI models until they fail.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00:00 - Introduction and guest background

00:05:11 - Early computer addiction and origin story

00:07:30 - Music career and COVID impact

00:09:10 - Transition into cybersecurity education

00:13:22 - Data Hater persona meaning explained

00:16:22 - Lessons learned the hard way

00:20:03 - Adversarial AI security role

00:28:00 - Solo Hobo pro bono security

00:35:00 - Hack Magazine and Academy vision

00:45:00 - Business model and creative process

LINKS

Applied Computing Technologies – https://www.appliedct.com.au - AI platform company for critical infrastructure

AttackIQ Academy – https://www.attackiq.com/academy/ - Cyber security training platform

B-Sides Brisbane – https://bsidesbrisbane.com - Information security conference

PADDOK's AI Red Team Course – https://www.youtube.com/c/PADDOK - Adversarial AI security training

Hack Magazine – https://hackmagazine.org - Cybersecurity publication

Solo Hobo – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwilliams-datahater/ - Pro bono security assessments

TAFE – https://www.tafe.edu.au - Technical education colleges Australia

Orbital AI Platform – https://orbital.ai - AI platform for industrial applications