Hacker Conversations: Katie Paxton-Fear Talks Autism, Morality and Hacking

Katie Paxton-Fear, who is neurodiverse and describes herself as autistic, explains that autism has shaped much of her approach to hacking and risk ethics. According to SecurityWeek, her early fascination with computers, an obsession with Neopets, and a penchant for disassembly without reassembly helped her become a natural reverse-engineer, a path that eventually led to a PhD in cybersecurity and AI from Cranfield University.

She describes privately run game servers during her teens as copyright infringements rather than traditional hacking, and notes she earned a $1,000 bounty at HackerOne before going on to events at DEFCON. The article notes she later lectured in cybersecurity, worked for Bugcrowd, and now serves as principal security research engineer at Traceable, which was acquired by Harness, where she continues to explore and publish on web APIs. Her stance on morality is unequivocal: she rejects ambiguity, believes hacking should be ethical, and opposes malicious or patriotic hacking.