Vika Felmetsger is a computer science Ph. D. student at UCSB. She is a research assistant in the Reliable Software Group (RSG) Her current focus is web application security. Her real introduction to practical security, and hacking in particular, was last fall’s “Network Security and Intrusion Detection” class. Her advice: Practice everything that you read about hacking or security don’t mean real, practice everything. If you don’t think that you have enough skills to compete at Defcon, sign up for the quals anyway.”]
Source: https://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2005/08/interview-with-def-con-ctf-winning.html