Marius considers himself a
serial entrepreneur and is very passionate about Artificial
Intelligence. Never a quitter, always a perfectionist, looking for
challenges that will change the world we live in. He believes in people
and the power of great teams, and he intends to start blogging in the
near future.
What determined you to shift your attention towards software development industry?
Besides
the great opportunities, I am a guy who loves challenges. I started to
like developing digital products and I belive that the online industry
will increase growth in the near future.
Hacking Servers
What is Hack a Server?
HaS
(Hack a Server) is a platform designed for conducting manual
penetration tests using the power of crowdsourcing, covered by anonymity
and confidentiality.
It's a fact that communities and
individuals who love to discover and test security issues already
exist. Whether they are called black, grey or white hackers, crackers,
skiddies, PenTesters you name it, they love to find flaws and
vulnerabilities. They love challenges and every flaw or vulnerability
represents a challenge for them. This is the truth.
When your system or production
server gets hacked in real life, peaceful intentions are the least to
expect. Trust me, we’ve been there having our platform “tested” and
tested. Thanks God we don’t keep any sensitive data about our users on
the platform.
HaS brings security skilled
people in the same place and gets them paid for what they love doing
most: Hacking. Everybody can register to our platform, but only the best
will have access to “Playground Arena”, where all the hacking happens.
In order to get access to the
“Playground Arena”, they will first have to pass a test. We all know
that the most important thing when someone finds holes into your system
is not the penetration itself but the report that describes the security
issues and the solutions. That report is the most important thing for a
CTO, Sys Admin or web app developer.
The test that a HaS user
has to pass in order to get access for hacking, is like any other tests
that they should pass in order to get different security certificates
(e.g. CPTC, OSPC, CEH, CEPT, CISSP etc). The only difference is that we
give this opportunity to all our users and we don’t charge for it. This
test ensures CTOs, Sys Administrators and web apps developers that
whenever they will pay and receive a Penetration Test Report, it will
comply Penetration Test Standard Reports.
How did you come up with the idea behind HaS platform?
I use to say: Solve a problem, then, build a product. There were two ingredients that make me come up with this idea:
- Gaming: I hate gaming because if you are not aware, it's like a drug.
- Security: Security is one big problem, believe me.
One day, being with my little daughter
at a doctor and waiting to get in, I was thinking „how can you use
gaming in such a way to solve a big problem?” And it strike it me.
Online Security Gaming but in another way that it hasn’t been done
before. Using the power of crowd source, and not for points (as was done
until now), but for real money. After I figured out the outlines, I
grabbed the phone, called a friend who’s Sys Admin and asked if he would
use such platform and how much would pay for this service. He said yes,
he would use such service and he would pay like 1000 Euros. …And here
we are. If you think deeper, we solve a few other complementary
problems, like hackers that ware black hats, can become grey and start
earning real money for what they love most: Hacking Servers. Moreover we
fill up a niche between companies that perform penetration tests with
high rate cost for small and medium companies and those companies. In
fact we don’t even compete with those companies and we complete them.
And I can add at least two or three more good things like being sys
admin or tester on our platform you get the opportunity if you are in
„Hall of Fame” to become consultants on InfoSec issues.
Building the product
Who is currently working to bring out HaS platform to the world?
I’ve tried many, we left few.
Marius Chis is currently CFO and
the first investor in this project. I tried to involve people that fall
in love with the project because I’m a strong believer that money is a
consequence of a “well done job” and not a purpose.
Andrei Nistor, is the CTO. He is
the one who did the most of the coding part, based on relevant feedback
from team members or testers. He worked day and night to get the
project working flawless, and made crowdsourcing pentesting possible.
Alexandru Constantinescu, is the
PR & Marketing Executive. He impressed me with his determination
when he told me how much loves the project and wants to jump in on
marketing side with no initial financial interest, because he
understands the development stages of a bootstrap leanstartup company.
Cosmin Strimbu is our frontend
developer. Although I didn’t meet him at the time I’m being interviewed,
the same like Alexandru, he just asked me to take him on board. I love
this kind of people driven by passion of what they doing and not by
money.
Am I lucky? Yes and no.
Lucky
because They find me (not otherwise) and They find the project. Not
lucky because I worked hard to spread the word about me and my projects.
No, this is not luck, this is hard work. I have spent over 3 years in
online industry, and although I’ve meet a lot of people, I would
recommend just a few.
What is the business model that will bring you revenue from HaS?
We
had a few business models in mind, but since we are dealing with a two
sided market place we have decided to charge at a decent percentage
those who get paid. That means low rates costs at a fraction comparing
with penetration test companies, and we are aiming towards a mass
adoption price.
Who are your customers?
HaS
customers are companies that wants to solve their security issues fast
and with low costs. CTOs CIOs CISOs, Sys Administrators, Data Base
Administrators, Web Apps Dev are also the professionals within companies
that can use our product.
Other customers are the
individual specialists, whether they are PenTesters, Sys Administrators,
who want to verify the security of their innovative servers or
applications, covered by what we value most, anonymity and
confidentiality.
What are the current features of hackaserver?
Hack a Server is the next level solution to resolve critical security issues in a funny war game way.
Cost effective: What can be better for your business than The Power of Crowd Source at cost of a fraction?
It’s Fast, Reliable and Secure.
Fast: Within minutes you can
setup your server with most popular OS and start to configure. I think
we have like 7 clicks to have a machine up and running
Reliable: Our PenTesters must
pass a test and complete a Penetration Test Report to see if they really
can be PenTesters before they get access to hack into Playground Arena.
Secure: At Hack a Server, we
encourage you not to disclose your real identity whatever you are a
company representative or a pentester. In this way, we don’t keep
sensitive data on our platform which means that no matter if someone
will try to penetrate our system. They will find nothing.
What’s next?
Are there new features to be implemented into the platfom?
Ha!
There are a lot of features that we want to implement. We have a top
three features but better for us is to let our customers to decide what
they want most. On the second thought we have one that we believe will
help CTOs, sys administrators, web apps dev and companies: Finding the
best way to automate the process to replicate a physical machine on our
platform. Now this is a challenge and we will start as soon as we close
this iteration (I think?!).
How you intend to penetrate the market?
Hack
a Server will become official platform for gamming at DefCamp a premier
InfoSec Conference that will held on September 6-8 in Cluj-Napoca City
at Hotel Napoca.
The virtualization module we make it open source so everybody who wants to deploy fast a PenTest lab can free of charge.
The virtualization module we intend to implement within faculties so the students will have a funny way to learn security.
Those are a few directions, part of our market strategy.
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