About the Author

Ric Messier, GCIH, GSEC, CEH, CISSP, MS has entirely too many letters after his name, as though he spends time gathering up strays that follow him home at the end of the day. His interest in information security began in high school but was cemented as a freshman at the University of Maine, Orono by taking advantage of a vulnerability in a jailed environment to break out of the jail and gain elevated privileges on an IBM mainframe in the early 1980s. His first experience with Unix was in the mid-1980s and Linux in the mid-1990s. He is an author, trainer, educator, incorrigible collector of letters after his name, and security professional with multiple decades of experience.