I can vouch for this. I started at Matasano two months ago, and am very pleased to find seriously bright people and a really fun gig. As one of the Matasanoans said, it is curiosity that is important in this gig, not paranoia or certificates. I have always enjoyed drilling down to find out what makes something tick. Clients ask us to find vulnerabilities in their systems. The gigs involve burping web apps, pulling apart C# and Java programs, understanding C, machine language, or even firmware and hardware.

And the coding part is most often in ruby or jruby (and yes, I do try to sneak in a little clojure past Tom). You don't need to know Ruby coming in the door, but if you are a good programmer, you will pick up in no time.

Check us out.

(Ok, back to breaking things. But they tell me I should stop breaking tools in the black bag, though.)