We are launching today the first in a series of posts in which SOURCE Boston 2009 presenters answer a selection of personal questions to help attendees get to know them better.

First up is Val Smith, founder of Attack Research. Val will be talking about global information security threats and breaking down elements of foreign Web attacks.

SOURCE: How did you get into the field of security?

Val Smith: I got a Tandy color computer for my 7th birthday and wrote a 2000 line BASIC program that emulated the movie WARGAMES and scared the hell out of my friends / parents.

SOURCE: What are your favorite security related information sources (blogs, websites, etc)?

Val Smith: The Daily Dave mailing list , I use to read Matasano's blog but they stopped posting, and probably carnal0wnage.

SOURCE: What security-related topics are you most interested in and why?

Val Smith: Everything from exploit development to malware to pen testing to
incident response. I've always been interested in pretty much everything.

SOURCE: What are the biggest challenges facing the security industry?

Val Smith: The fact that defense is losing so badly. Attackers shift and adapt rapidly, defenders entrench and change slowly. It's very much a losing game.

SOURCE: What projects are you working on currently?

Val Smith: Building a phishing framework for pen testing using Metasploit, malicious file formats, and signed Java applets. Building up attackresearch.com which analyzes all kinds of attack methodologies, how-to's, incident response, etc.and a few other things I'm not ready to mention yet.

SOURCE: What do you hope the top lessons learned from your session at SOURCE Boston will be?

Val Smith: Insight into how serious and widespread the Russian and particularly
Chinese exploitation problems are and maybe shed some light on some arcane aspects of how they operate.