Gordon Lyon is a network security expert, open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 programmer, writer, and a hacker. He authored the open source Nmap Security Scanner

Nmap

Nmap is a security scanner originally written by Gordon Lyon used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, thus creating a "map" ofthe network...

 and numerous books, web sites, and technical papers focusing on network security. Lyon is a founding member of the Honeynet Project

Honeynet project

The Honeynet Project is a leading international security research organization, dedicated to investigating the latest attacks, developing open source security tools to improve Internet security and learning how malicious hackers behave...

 and Vice President of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility is a global organization promoting the responsible use of computer technology. in 1983 . It educates policymakers and the public on a wide range of issues...

.

Personal life

Lyon has been active in the network security community since the mid 1990s. His handle, Fyodor, was taken from Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Most of his programming is done in the C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

, C++

C++

C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...

, and Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

 programming languages. He lives in Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

.

Web sites

Lyon maintains several network security web sites:

• Nmap.Org — Documents the Nmap Security Scanner
  Nmap
  Nmap is a security scanner originally written by Gordon Lyon used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, thus creating a "map" ofthe network...
  
   and provides it for download.
• SecTools.Org — The top 100 network security tools (ranked by thousands of Nmap users)
• SecLists.Org — Archive of the most common security mailing lists
• Insecure.Org — His main site, offering security news/updates, exploit world archive, and other misc. security resources.

Published books

Lyon has written and co-authored several books:

• Know Your Enemy: Revealing the Security Tools, Tactics, and Motives of the Blackhat Community (Addison-Wesley, 2002, ISBN 0-201-74613-1), co-authored with other members of the Honeynet Project
  Honeynet project
  The Honeynet Project is a leading international security research organization, dedicated to investigating the latest attacks, developing open source security tools to improve Internet security and learning how malicious hackers behave...
  
  . A 2nd edition is now available (ISBN 0-321-16646-9), as are sample chapters.
• Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent (Syngress, 2004, ISBN 1-931836-05-1). Hacker fiction, but tries to stay realistic. Co-authored with Kevin Mitnick
  Kevin Mitnick
  Kevin David Mitnick is a computer security consultant, author, and hacker. In the late 20th century, he was convicted of various computer- and communications-related crimes. At the time of his arrest, he was the most-wanted computer criminal in the United States.-Personal life:Mitnick grew up in...
  
   and other hackers. Gordon's chapter is freely available online.
• Nmap Network Scanning (Nmap Project, 2008, ISBN 978-0979958717)

Interviews

Public interviews with Lyon/Vaskovich have been posted by SecurityFocus, Slashdot, Whitedust, Zone-H, TuxJournal, Safemode, and Google. Many of these provide more personal details than his official bio page does.

Conferences

Lyon attends and speaks at many security conferences. He has presented at DEFCON, CanSecWest, FOSDEM

FOSDEM

FOSDEM is a non-commercial volunteer organized European event centered around free and open source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open source software movement...

, IT Security World, Security Masters' Dojo, ShmooCon

ShmooCon

ShmooCon is an American hacker convention organized by The Shmoo Group. There are typically about 35 different talks and presentations, on a variety of subjects related to computer security and cyberculture.-History:...

, IT-Defense, SFOBug, and others.

External links

• Home page