Peiter Zatko
Peiter C. Zatko, better known as Mudge, is a network security expert, open source programmer, writer, and a hacker. He was the most prominent member of the high-profile hacker think tank the L0pht as well as the long-lived computer and culture hacking cooperative the Cult of the Dead Cow. While involved with the L0pht, Mudge contributed significantly to disclosure and education on information and security vulnerabilities. In addition to pioneering buffer overflow work, the security advisories he released contained early examples of flaws in the following areas: code injection, race condition, side-channel attack, exploitation of  embedded systems, and cryptanalysis of commercial systems. He was the original author of the password cracking software L0phtCrack. In 2010 Mudge accepted a position as a program manager at DARPA where he oversaw cyber security research. In 2013 Mudge went to work for Google in their Advanced Technology & Projects division. In 2020, he was hired as head of security at Twitter. Biography. Born in December 1970, Mudge graduated from the Berklee College of Music at the top of his class and is an adept guitar player. Mudge was responsible for early research into a type of security vulnerability known as  the buffer overflow. In 1995 he published "How to Write Buffer Overflows", one of the first papers on the topic. He published some of the first security advisories and research demonstrating early vulnerabilities in Unix such as code injection, side-channel attacks, and information leaks, and was a leader in the full disclosure movement. He was the initial author of security tools L0phtCrack, AntiSniff, and l0phtwatch. Mudge was one of the first people from the hacker community to reach out and build relationships with government and industry. In demand as a public speaker, he spoke at hacker conferences such as  DEF CON and academic conferences such as USENIX. Mudge has also been a member of Cult of the Dead Cow since 1996. He was one of the seven L0pht members who testified before a Senate committee in 1998 about the serious vulnerabilities of the Internet at that time. The L0pht became the computer security consultancy @stake in 1999, and Mudge became the vice president of research and development and later chief scientist. In 2000, after the first crippling Internet distributed denial-of-service attacks, he was invited to meet with President Bill Clinton at a security summit alongside cabinet members  and industry executives. In 2004 he became a division scientist at government contractor BBN Technologies, where he originally worked in the 1990s, and also joined the technical advisory board of NFR Security. In 2010, it was announced that he would be project manager of a DARPA project focused on directing research in cyber security. In 2013 he announced that he would leave DARPA for a position at Google ATAP. In 2015 Zatko announced on Twitter he would join a project called #CyberUL, a testing organisation for computer security inspired by Underwriters Laboratories, mandated by the White House. On 11 August  2007 he married Sarah Lieberman, a co-worker at BBN. DARPA. At DARPA he created the Cyber Analytical Framework the agency used to evaluate DoD investments in offensive and defensive cyber security. During his tenure he ran at least three DoD programs known as Military Networking Protocol (MNP), Cyber-Insider Threat (CINDER), and Cyber Fast Track (CFT). Military Networking Protocol (MNP) provided network prioritization with full user-level attribution for military computer networks. Cyber-Insider Threat (CINDER) focused on identifying cyber espionage conducted by virtual insider threats such as future variants of Stuxnet or Duqu. CINDER is often mistakenly associated  with WikiLeaks in the media. This is possibly due to the confusion between DARPA programs focused on identifying human insider threat such as ADAMS and the identification of software espionage posed by malware in the CINDER program. This issue was clarified by Mudge in his Defcon 2011 keynote at 46 minutes and 11 seconds into the talk. Cyber Fast Track (CFT) provided resources and funding to security research, including programs run by hackers, hackerspaces, and makerlabs. The program provided an alternative to traditional government contracting vehicles that was accessible to individuals and small companies previously unable to work within the  cumbersome and complicated DARPA process. The novel contracting effort had an averaging time of 7 days from receipt of proposal to funding being provided to the proposing research organization. The program was initially announced at Shmoocon during his 2011 keynote. L0pht Security advisories and software. Mudge published numerous papers and advisories detailing security problems across different applications and operating systems and was a pioneering champion of full disclosure.