2012 — The Computer That Changed Everything

Hey, if you don't know me yet — I'm Rizky Aditya. These days I work as a GRC Professional and Security Researcher. But this story? It has nothing to do with cybersecurity. At least, not yet.

It all started in 2012. I was seven years old.

My parents gave me my very first computer, and honestly? I had zero idea what to do with it. Like, none. I didn't know what a computer was even for. To me it was just this weird machine sitting on the desk with a bunch of random icons I didn't understand.

Then one of those icons caught my eye.

It had a police officer holding a rifle. No context, no explanation. I just double-clicked it.

Turns out that was Counter-Strike 1.6. One of the most iconic FPS games ever made — though obviously I had no clue about any of that at the time. I was just a kid who wanted to see what happened.

There was just one problem.

Everything was in English.

Every single menu, button, and option — all in a language I had never even studied. I genuinely had no idea how to start a match or what anything meant.

My uncle saw me struggling and stepped in. He walked me through the basics, and after watching him a few times, I started memorizing which buttons to click. Couldn't read a word of English. Didn't matter. I just memorized the whole thing.

And yeah, I got completely addicted.

Every day after that I was back at that computer — playing, clicking random stuff, exploring every corner of the interface just to see what it did. It stopped being just a game pretty fast.

Looking back, it was never really about Counter-Strike.

That game was just the first door the computer opened for me. Behind it was a way bigger world — full of things to learn, break, and figure out. I just didn't know it yet.

If you'd told seven-year-old me that one day I'd be helping companies manage cyber risk, doing penetration tests, and reporting bugs to Google — I would've had absolutely no idea what any of that meant.

I wasn't thinking about becoming a security professional.

I was just a curious kid who wanted to know what this machine could do.

Turns out that curiosity never really went away.