Andy Gill is the author of the Leanpub book Breaking into Information Security: Learning the Ropes 101. In this interview, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp talks with Andy about his background and what it's like to get started in the information security industry, the nature of that industry, the relationship between software penetration testing and martial arts, the internet of death, Brexit, and at the end, they talk a little bit about his experience as a self-published author.

This interview was recorded on May 23, 2017.

The full audio for the interview is here. You can subscribe to the Frontmatter podcast in iTunes or add the podcast URL directly.

This interview has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

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A Note About the Leanpub Frontmatter Podcast

This summer we split the old Leanpub podcast into two distinct podcasts:

Frontmatter, which is a general interest podcast where you can listen to Leanpub authors talk with Leanpub co-founder Len Epp about their books and their areas of expertise, from data science to molecular biology, to the history of labor and management. And for those interested in the nitty-gritty of what it takes to be a successful self-published author, at the end of each episode Len asks the author about how they made their book and how they are spreading the word, and other publishing shop talk.

Backmatter, a new podcast focused specifically on the publishing industry and its latest trends. In each episode Len interviews a professional from the publishing world about their background and their insider's perspective on what's happening in the huge and evolving world of book publishing.

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Andy Gill

Len: Hi, I'm Len Epp from Leanpub, and in this Leanpub podcast, I'll be interviewing Andy Gill. Andy is a web application penetration tester, and a researcher and blogger - and I gather, also a martial artist; I'm going to be asking him a little bit about that.

You can read Andy's blog at blog.zsec.uk, and check out his website atzephr.fish. That's Z-E-P-H-R dot fish. And you can follow him on Twitter @zephrfish, with the same kind of spelling.

Andy is the author of the Leanpub book, Breaking into Information Security: Learning the Ropes 101. His book is meant to teach people about the information technology security industry and ethical hacking, and how to start a career in web application penetration testing, and seeking bug bounties. Something that's an increasingly important part of our general day-to-day activity with software eating the world, and it's something that we could actually all benefit from understanding better. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who's interested in getting to know a little bit about this area.

In this interview, we're going to talk about Andy's professional interests, his book, and at the end, we'll talk a little bit about his experience using Leanpub.

So, thank you Andy for being on a Leanpub podcast.

Andy: Thanks for having me.

Len: I always like to start these interviews by asking people for their origin story, so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you first became interested in computers and software, and eventually the security aspect of things. From what I gather, your interests began pretty early on.

Andy: I've been