Spencer Ackerman is a senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast. Previously, he was the U.S. national security editor of The Guardian, where he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team reporting on Edward Snowden’s NSA disclosures. Before that, he was a senior writer for Wired, where he won a National Magazine Award for reporting on Islamophobic counterterrorism training at the FBI.
Claudio Agosti (@_vecna) began as a hacker in the late 1990s, passionate on low-level networking and operating systems, and therefore paranoid about surveillance. That was the driving force to shift into becoming a privacy hacktivist and, later on, solely addressing corporate surveillance, web tracking, and algorithm manipulation. His last project began in 2016, is https://facebook.tracking.exposed, and has been used in time of turmoil, or during electoral campaigns (Italy, France, and Argentina) to monitor how the algorithm influences public discourse.
In addition to being a fabulous lockpicker and escape artist, Aidan claims to have secretly ghost written the epic biography: The Secret Life of Harry Houdini (ISBN 10: 0743272080).
Mitch Altman (@maltman23) is a hacker and inventor, known for inventing TV-B-Gone, a keychain that turns off TVs in public places. He co-founded a successful Silicon Valley startup and did pioneering work in virtual reality. He is an author and teacher, and goes around the world giving talks and workshops. Mitch promotes hackerspaces, open-source hardware, and mentors others wherever he goes. He is a co-founder of Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco, and is president and CEO of Cornfield Electronics.
Amelia Andersdotter (@teirdes) focuses on the human rights implications of Wi-Fi standards at the IEEE. She was a member of the European Parliament until 2014 and promoted copyright reform, competition, and interplay between technical and legal standards.
Santiago Andrigo (@sandrigo) is a Product Manager at Jigsaw, a technology incubator developing technology to make the world a safer place. Before working on Outline, he's been involved in anti-malware initiatives, productizing liquid democracy, and internationalizing products. When not geeking out, he can be found dancing Tango in New York.
Karl Anderson (@karlanderson) is a hardware and software experimenter who is good at thinking up projects, but bad at predicting whether or not they will be practical. As director of Futel, he runs Portland’s fastest-growing payphone network. With C.H.U.N.K. 666, he has created amphibious human-powered vehicles out of discarded bicycles and construction debris. With the Church of Robotron, he has built a post-apocalyptic training facility, indoctrination center, and reading room based on the tenets of a coin-operated video game.
Gus Andrews wears many hats. She has been an educator, a user experience specialist, a puppeteer, a panelist on Off The Hook, and an organizer of HOPE. She has spoken on user experience, security, and privacy issues at Google and West Point; her policy research on digital security tools has informed the U.S. State Department and the EFF. Her current project is a book, tentatively titled Keep Calm And Log On, to help non-technical people safely navigate data breaches, addiction to their phones, “fake news,” and digital domestic abuse.
Ann is a TOOOL DC force of nature... and also, somewhat ironically, mad scientist who has created a weather-controlling machine in her lab. If you’re enjoying the sunshine and blue skies this HOPE, thank her!
Mehwish Ansari (@mehwishaansari) is a delegate for the U.K. to the ITU-T, ITU-D, and ITU Council. Previously, Mehwish worked on digital rights issues at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as part of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. She holds an MSc in global governance and diplomacy from the University of Oxford.
The first thing Aphrodite (@1c75a) sought out when she first went online over 25 years ago was info on hacking. The second, info on identity documents, identity theft, and fraud. Her interest in IDs extends nearly 30 years, and involved educating merchants on spotting fakes and railing against practices now well known as vectors of fraud. She spent seven years working for an American DMV, during which time she obtained the unique view from the other side of the service counter at some of the country’s busiest offices. She currently works for a tech nonprofit in Canada.
Dave Arney (@dave_32768) works on improving patient safety and outcomes by building open, interoperable medical systems. He’s working on regulatory and standards issues around interoperability, as well as data sharing and patient privacy for IoT medical and wellness devices. He enjoys designing and building embedded systems (including open medical devices and lab hardware) and repurposing old industrial machines.
Dan Bartholomew is CEO/executive director of Free Geek “The Mothership” based in Portland, Oregon. He spent his career helping companies thrive at the nexus of service, technology, and innovation. Prior to joining Free Geek, Dan held partnership tenure at several Big Four consulting organizations, where he built leading industry- and geographically-based practices at KPMG and PwC. He also served as COO at Dynamic Healthcare Systems. Dan found zeal for mission-based work founding ROHI, an orphanage and school for the street children of Kenya.
Beaches (@__Beaches__) was first introduced to the computer as a small child. A couple of decades later, he went to HOPE Number Nine, where he worked on Radio Statler doing the audio archiving. For some reason he was asked to stick around. He is currently tasked with directing the production of content for Radio Statler.
Anna Bernardi is a security engineer interested in Golang and cryptography. She is now based in San Francisco, where she helps Stripe’s security team protect their data. She has a past in penetration testing, and a present in engineering.
BiaSciLab (@BiaSciLab) is an 11-year-old girl who loves science, technology, and learning new things. Her hobbies include fencing, programming, lockpicking, and inventing new things with her dad. She is working towards becoming a pentester and a scientist.
Elizabeth Biddlecome is a consultant and instructor, delivering technical training and mentorship to students and professionals. She leverages her enthusiasm for architecture, security, and code to design and implement comprehensive information security solutions for business needs. Elizabeth enjoys wielding everything from soldering irons to scripting languages in cybersecurity competitions, hackathons, and CTFs.
Matt Blaze is a professor in the computer and information science department at the University of Pennsylvania, where he hacks on security, cryptography, voting, surveillance, and public policy. He’s spoken at almost every HOPE conference.
Jonah Bossewitch is an educator, technologist, and activist who grew up in Manhattan and now lives in Brooklyn. He currently works at Vibrant.org, the organization that runs the National Suicide Lifeline and New York's NYCWell crisis center as the director of software architecture and applications. He studied communications at Columbia University and in 2016 defended his doctoral dissertation, "Dangerous Gifts: Towards a New Wave of Psychiatric Resistance," which examines significant shifts in the politics of psychiatric resistance and mental health activism. He has been organizing around radical mental health issues for over a decade and has over 15 years of experience as a professional software architect, designer, and developer. He blogs at alchemicalmusings.org.
Sam Bowne has been teaching computer networking and security classes at CCSF since 2000. He has given talks and hands-on trainings at DEFCON, HOPE, B-Sides SF, B-Sides LV, BayThreat, LayerOne, Toorcon, and many other schools and conferences. He has a B.S., a Ph.D., a CISSP, and a lot of t-shirts.
Branger_Briz (@branger_briz) is a collective digital agency and lab made up of artists, strategists, educators, and programmers bent on articulating contemporary culture. They produce award winning work for brands, agencies, and cultural institutions around the world.
Barrett Brown (@barrettbrown_) is a writer and anarchist activist. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Intercept, Huffington Post, New York Press, Skeptic, The Daily Beast, Al Jazeera, and dozens of other outlets. In 2009, he founded Project PM, a distributed think tank, which was later repurposed to oversee a crowdsourced investigation into the private espionage industry and the intelligence community at large via emails stolen from federal contractors and other sources. In 2011 and 2012, he worked with Anonymous on campaigns involving the Tunisian revolution, government misconduct, and other issues. In 2012, Brown was arrested and later sentenced to four years in federal prison on charges stemming from his investigations and work with Anonymous. While imprisoned, he won the National Magazine Award for his column, “The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Prison.” Upon his release in late 2016, he began work on the Pursuance System, a platform for mass civic engagement and coordinated opposition. His third book, My Glorious Defeats, will be released in 2018.
Vivian Brown is a software engineer on EFF’s web development team. She maintains eff.org and builds campaign sites and internal tools for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before joining EFF, Vivian was part of a worker co-op that provided web development and design services to social change organizations. Some of her other past projects include applying machine learning to birdsong and mapping Oakland campaign finance data.
Bill Budington (@legind) is a longtime activist, programmer, and cryptography enthusiast. He works on EFF’s tech projects team as a security engineer and technologist, and is the lead developer for HTTPS Everywhere and Panopticlick. He has also contributed to projects such as Let’s Encrypt and SecureDrop. Bill can be found talking to crowds of people on soapboxes and stages in far off places, or doing digital security trainings for organizations. He loves hackerspaces and getting together with other techies to tinker, code, share, and build the technological commons. Er spricht auch gern Deutsch!
Bunni3Burn is a homegrown Midwesterner hailing from a cornfield in Illinois who ran away to a real city. She rarely sleeps, hardly leaves the house, and often forgets to eat. She enjoys pixel art, social engineering, and collecting bouncy balls. In kindergarten, she played Ms. Pacman on a computer... and that’s all it took. She fell in love with technology. Bunni3 has been around since the birth of Radio Statler at The Last Hope in 2008. She spent three years as the program director and producer. Now she hangs around Radio Statler so she can take over the microphone after midnight.
Rafael Câmera started an open-source hardware company in Brazil in 2015, teaching kids of all ages - from five to 105 years old - about electronics, how to solder, and programming. He is a founding member of a new hackerspace in Brazil called Bolacha (bolacha.org), and is also an editor at Fazedores.com, the largest maker blog and forum in Brazil.
Michael Casadevall (@fossfirefighter) lives in New York and is a contributor to multiple free and open-source software projects, an Ubuntu core developer, and an active developer for the Hermes Center for Transparency working on the GlobaLeaks project. In his free time, he likes to travel, write, and play with radios.
James Chambers (@jamchamb_) is a security researcher at Red Balloon Security and formerly worked as a security consultant at NCC Group. He enjoys reverse engineering and hacking video games, as well as other topics in low-level hardware and software security.
Chaz is frequently mistaken for Chazz Palminteri, but his name is not spelled the same way. While he shares a surname with the famous New York City actor, Chaz from TOOOL spells his first name with only one letter Z.
The Cheshire Catalyst (Richard Cheshire) (@Cheshire2600) was the last editor of the notorious TAP Newsletter of the 1970s and 1980s. (TAP was a predecessor of 2600 Magazine.) In his “share the knowledge” spirit, he has volunteered at every HOPE conference since the first one in 1994. His PHonePHriendly.Com sets up web pages meant to be read on mobile phone web browsers, and allows him to delude himself that he’s still into phones as a phreak.
Ming Chow (@0xmchow) is a senior lecturer at the Tufts University Department of Computer Science. Ming has spoken at numerous organizations and conferences. He was awarded the 2017 Lerman-Neubauer Prize for Outstanding Teaching and Advising at Tufts, awarded annually to a faculty member who has had a profound intellectual impact on their students, both inside and outside the classroom.
Amanda Dawn Christie (aka xoadc) is an interdisciplinary artist working in film, video, performance, photography, audio, transmission art, and electronics. Hailing originally from New Brunswick, Canada, she has lived and worked in Halifax, Vancouver, Amsterdam, Sackville, Moncton, and Montreal. Concepts and themes explored in her work focus primarily on the relationship between the human body and analog technology in a digital age. She currently lives in Montreal where she continues her art practice while working as an assistant professor of Intermedia (video, performance, and electronics) in the Department of Studio Arts at Concordia University.
Click is the TOOOL NYC member who had to move across the country because he picked all the locks he could find in the Big Apple. Now he spends his time synthesizing new elements, a la Tony Stark, for the fabrication of new tools and hardware.
Charlie Coile is the president of Free I.T. Athens, an all-volunteer tech nonprofit serving the community of Athens, Georgia. She’s passionate about free education and is a serious Doctor Who fan.
'Da Beave' has spoken at numerous HOPEs on topics ranging from VoIP to X.25 networks. He has also spoken at Defcon, #26C3 (CCC), BSides (Berlin), and various other hacker conferences. He’s authored books for Syngress and is the CTO at a network security company. When not trolling trolls, Beave is working on “Sagan” (sagan.io), an advanced open-source log analysis engine.
David Cripe is a physicist and electrical engineer, currently employed in the research and development of military electronics systems. He is a lifelong experimenter, electronics tinkerer, guitarist, and inventor with over 50 patents. Active in amateur radio, he is a prolific creator of minimalist QRP radio kits, with over 20 designs in use by the amateur radio community. Most recently, he has turned his attention to understanding the psychology of innovation, working with youth STEM programs to cultivate the next generation of makers and hackers. His call sign is NM0S.
Joe Cupano is thankful for what he calls “an accidental career” in technology that started with component level repair of early microcomputers (as in solder iron) to turning technology tricks in three piece suits for globally recognized companies. His first fusion of his amateur radio and computer interests was around 1983 when he successfully sent an auto-run computer program acoustically via VHF radio from one Sinclair ZX81 to another messing with a thermal printer. Joe has served roles in the amateur radio community that include the ARRL HSMM Working Group - which helped spawned the mesh networking popularity of today.
Marc DaCosta (@marc_dacosta) is a creative technologist and anthropologist living in New York. He co-founded Enigma, a connected data company, and is a fellow at Columbia Journalism School. Occasionally, he can be found on various ham radio frequencies under the call sign KD2MMB.
Molly de Blanc is a free software activist from Somerville, Massachusetts. She is a campaigns manager at the Free Software Foundation. Molly serves on the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative. She contributes to the Debian Project, helping to organize their participation in programs like Google Summer of Code and Outreachy.
Dernyn (@D_e_r_n_y_n) has been part of the hacker subculture, community, and NYC2600 since 2000. He is a software engineer who works with computer networks and security by trade, and has been tinkering with computer technology and electronics by taking it apart for the last 18 years.
Joan Donovan (@BostonJoan) is the media manipulation/platform accountability research lead at Data & Society in Manhattan. After completing her Ph.D. in sociology and science studies at the University of California San Diego, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, where she researched white supremacists’ use of DNA ancestry tests, social movements, and technology. For several years, Joan has conducted action research with different networked social movements in order to map and improve the communication infrastructures built by protesters. In her role as a participant, she identifies information bottlenecks, decodes algorithmic behavior, and connects organizations with other like-minded networks.
Avri Doria (@avri) is a technologist who has developed Internet protocols and architectures for over 30 years. She co-chairs the IETF Research Group on Human Rights Protocol Considerations and is a member of the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG). She sits on the ICANN board of directors and the Internet Governance Forum Multistakeholder Advisory Group.
Evelyne Drouin is the un-categorizable artist, whose style and approach to sound have earned her an international reputation under the brand of DJ Mini. Evelyne sculpts textural sonic environments, soundscapes and hybrids, and installations that actively respond to the participant. Her current focus is Gé1nieMob which ignites creativity through technology education.
Jeffrey Dungen is the co-founder of reelyActive, an IoT startup which allows computers to observe the real world like the web by listening for the radio devices we already carry. At a previous startup, he developed a camera to enable "Google Street View Live". There's a fine line between creepy and cool, and he's been toeing it for over 15 years!
John Dunlap (@JohnDunlap2) is a New York City cybersecurity expert. He has given presentations on his exploit development research both at home and abroad, including talks at Defcon, Derbycon, and Australia’s Ruxcon. John is a major proponent of hacker culture preservation, and is a supporter of the international demoscene. John specializes in reverse engineering, exploit development, social engineering, and source code analysis.
As the North America program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, Alex Ellerbeck leads CPJ’s research on press freedom threats in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Prior to joining CPJ, she worked as the senior research assistant and regional Latin America expert for Freedom House’s annual publication Freedom on the Net, which surveys Internet freedom in 65 countries.
Roya Ensafi (@royaensafi) is a research assistant professor at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on security and privacy, with an emphasis on designing techniques and systems to protect users from hostile networks. Much of her work focuses on detecting and defending against adversaries who manipulate Internet traffic in order to block, monitor, or otherwise tamper with users’ online activities.
EOF (Hunter Rogers) (@0xEOF) is a hacker living in New York City.
Ksenia Ermoshina (@edok_lotosov) is a research fellow at The Citizen Lab. Her work is supported by the Open Technology Fund as part of Information Control Fellowship. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology of science and technologies from Mines ParisTech School of Engineering, and her current research is focused on information controls in Crimea after the annexation of the region by the Russian Federation. She’s interested in Internet topology and Internet censorship in this disputed area; she also analyzes digital threats to activists and journalists working in or with Crimea. Previously, she’s been a postdoctoral researcher at the European Horizon 2020 research project NEXTLEAP, where she conducted research on the development of encryption protocols and usage of secure messaging applications among high-risk populations.
Manny Faces (@MannyFaces) is an award-winning new media journalist. He is the founder of the hip-hop publication Birthplace Magazine and the nonprofit organization, The Center for Hip-Hop Advocacy. He is also the producer and host of News Beat, a social justice podcast mixing journalism and music, a frequent lecturer, a DJ, and outspoken advocate for hip-hop music and culture.
Chris Fallen (@ctfallen) is a research associate professor of space physics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Geophysical Institute. He is also the chief scientist at the UAF High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) ionospheric research observatory, a former UAF faculty senate president, and the current chair of the University of Alaska Faculty Alliance. For the record, his giant cat has never sat on the HAARP ionospheric heater, but probably would if given the opportunity.
Camille Fassett (@camfassett) is a journalist and researcher interested in public records, digital security, and witchcraft. She investigates police departments’ use of surveillance technology and relationships to private corporations at Lucy Parsons Labs. She also works as a reporter at Freedom of the Press Foundation, where she co-runs a project systematically documenting all attacks on press freedom in the United States and writes about civil liberties and government transparency.
'Faux Real' served in the Marine Corps infantry prior to discovering his passion for computers, networks, and infiltrating computer networks. His technical hobbies quickly became desperate obsessions full of bits and bytes and sleepless nights. Shortly thereafter, after landing a job in the security industry, he attained his master’s in cyber intelligence. He has spoken at BSides, ISSA, and other security conferences.
Matthew Finkel (@mfinkel) hacks on privacy-preserving technology most days. He helps train activists, journalists, and at-risk groups on digital and operational security. He’s worked with the Tor Project during the day and night, improving code and the community over the last few years. Currently he is a Tor Browser developer.
Jim Fisher started dabbling with computers in 1981 with a Sinclair Research computer kit, and has been dabbling as a hacker and hobbyist ever since. Also known as Breadman, Jim's amateur radio call sign is AJ3DI. He lives with his family in Roslyn, Pennsylvania.
Luca Follis’ research interests lie at the intersection of socio-legal studies and political and social theory. He is interested in how democratic orders rationalize, legitimate, and explicate punitive choices. His work focuses on the areas of democratic and critical theory; political economy, justice, and crime; jurisprudence of the carceral; power and the state; comparative criminal justice; and historiography of the prison.
Jonathan Foote is a freelance engineer/roboticist in San Francisco. Jonathan has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, and has years of hands-on experience with electronics and interfacing. Besides consulting, he teaches interaction design at California College of the Arts and was an artist-in-residence at Autodesk Pier 9. His recent work on surgical robots, interactive and kinetic art, and health wearables has given him direct experience with a wide variety of sensors which he is delighted to share with you.
Limor "Ladyada" Fried (@adafruit) founded Adafruit in 2005. As an MIT hacker and engineer, her goal was to create the best place online for learning electronics and making the best designed products for makers of all ages and skill levels. Adafruit has grown to over 100 employees in the heart of New York City with a 50,000 plus square foot factory. Limor was the first female engineer on the cover of Wired, was awarded Entrepreneur Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and was on the cover of Make: Volume 57. She was a founding member of the New York City Industrial Business Advisory Council and named a White House Champion of Change in 2016.
Sergey Frolov (@srfrolov) is a third year computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is researching Internet censorship and network security. Sergey works on practical anti-censorship solutions, including detection and protection against TLS fingerprinting, a probe-resistant web proxy technique, and TapDance - a type of refraction networking focused on deployment.
Ryan Fukunaga is the executive director of Free Geek Toronto. With a decade of experience in the community and nonprofit sector, his focus has been primarily on teaching digital literacy and building community capacity using technology.
Nathan Fuller (@couragefound, @nathanLfuller) is a writer and campaigner for the Courage Foundation, an international organization supporting those who risk life or liberty to bring important truths to light. Before Courage, Nathan was the court reporter for the Chelsea Manning Support Network.
Harley Geiger (@HarleyGeiger) is the director of public policy at Rapid7, where he leads public policy and government affairs activities related to cybersecurity, privacy, and trade. Previously, he was advocacy director and senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), where he worked on issues related to surveillance and cybersecurity. Previously, he was senior legislative counsel for U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, serving as lead staffer for technology and intellectual property issues. He is a licensed attorney and is CIPP/US certified.
Lex Gill (@lex_is) is a research fellow at The Citizen Lab, where her work focuses on privacy, expression, national security law, censorship, and surveillance. She has previously worked for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Policy Clinic, and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Lex holds a B.C.L./LL.B. from McGill University’s Faculty of Law.
Daniel Kahn Gillmor (dkg) is a contributor to free software projects including Debian, notmuch, GnuPG, and Enigmail, and a technologist for the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. He is also a participant in the IETF, where he focuses on security, privacy, and other protocol features that impact civil rights and liberties.
Mr. Glomar has 25 years of experience in public records access laws, and has made thousands of requests and appeals. He has developed, popularized, and disseminated a number of successful FOIA techniques, has advocated for modernization and improvement of federal FOIA practices, and has assisted hundreds of reporters in sharpening their FOIA skills. He has founded several transparency-related websites.
Matt Goerzen studies trolling techniques and cultures as part of the media manipulation team at Data & Society. He’s also applied many of the techniques in the art world, for example by once developing an absurdist AdSense campaign ostensibly designed to sell a hideous sculpture to art collector Shaquille O’Neal, but more accurately designed to piggyback off of free clickbait media attention to inform readers about psychometric ad tech practices. He has written an academic study of contemporary artists who function as what he calls “critical trolls,” arguing that trolling can be seen as an extension of the politicized attentional strategies used by the 20th century avant-garde. His current work at Data & Society focuses on mapping the way white supremacists and state actors have appropriated trolling techniques for use in influence operations as a form of “bottom-up agenda setting.”
Adam Goldstein (@AdGo) is a program officer with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education in Washington DC, and an attorney licensed in New York. Prior to that, he was an attorney with the Student Press Law Center, where he helped over 15,000 college and high school journalists with First Amendment and media questions. This is his third HOPE.
Emmanuel Goldstein (@emmangoldstein), apart from organizing the HOPE conference, is somehow talked into editing all of the bios in this program, so the prospect of actually writing one is almost too much to bear. However, [think of something clever to say and add it before this thing goes to press]
Gay Gordon-Byrne (@RepairCoalition) is one of the founders of The Repair Association. Among her many career experiences, she was trained as a systems engineer for early IBM mainframes; developed a database of hardware failure rates based on repair records; and bought, sold, and leased equipment and services for independents and OEMs alike. She is the author of Buying, Supporting, Maintaining Software and Equipment: An IT Manager’s Guide to Controlling the Product Lifecycle.
David Goren is a radio producer and audio archivist based in Brooklyn, New York. He’s created programming for the BBC World Service, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, as well as audio-based installations for the Proteus Gowanus gallery, and the Ethnographic Terminalia Collective. In 2016, he was an artist-in-residence at Wave Farm, a center for the transmission arts. David’s latest documentary is “Outlaws of the Airwaves: The Rise of Pirate Radio Station WBAD,” which is part of the podcast series Lost Notes from KCRW.
David Goulet has been with Tor for more than five years now. He is part of the network team which is responsible for maintaining the Tor software. Apart from everyday Tor development, he hunts down bad relays in the network, works on hidden services, and maintains “torsocks.”
Johannes Grenzfurthner is an artist, director, writer, performer, and researcher. He is the founder and artistic director of monochrom, an internationally-acting art and tech group. He is one of the most outspoken researchers in the field of sexuality and technology, and one of the founders of “techno-hedonism.” He is head of “Arse Elektronika” (sex and tech festival) in San Francisco, “Hedonistika” (food tech festival in Montreal and Tel Aviv), and host of “Roboexotica” (Festival for Cocktail-Robotics) in Vienna.
Vi Grey (@ViGreyTech) is a technology researcher, software engineer, and web developer who co-runs an interactive technology studio. His recent projects include a personal digital assistant, a minimalist theoretical computing system, and a custom interpreter in NES Cartridge format for the programming language used in the CypherCon 2.0 and 3.0 badges. Over the years, his curiosity has led him to build servers from scratch, develop software for old systems, research information theory, learn lockpicking, and even dabble in quantum computing.
Matt Griffin (@mifga) is the director of community for Ultimaker North America. He is a writer, community developer, teacher, and consultant, covering topics such as 3D printing, electronics hobbyists, and more. Matt is a contributor to MAKE Magazine, including the annual Make: Ultimate Guide to 3DP series. Previously, he was the community manager at MakerBot and director of community and support at Adafruit.
Emily Hammes, a biomedical and manufacturing engineer by training, loves teaching and building prototypes. A Kansas native, she learned to teach while working at the Max Planck Institute and University in Magdeburg, Germany.
Jennifer Helsby (@redshiftzero) is a co-founding member and CTO of Lucy Parsons Labs. She also works as lead developer of the SecureDrop anonymous whistleblowing platform at Freedom of the Press Foundation. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Data Science and Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she worked on applying machine learning methods to problems in public policy. Jennifer got her Ph.D. in astrophysics at the Center for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.
Mark Robert Henderson is a programmer currently working with the TallyLab team trying to build a federated, decentralized, encrypted-at-rest future for our data.
Kevin Hodges (@khodges42) earned his GED from the South Area Juvenile Justice Center. He has written code for numerous three letter agencies he isn’t allowed to name, and currently builds AI at an infosec company he also isn’t allowed to name. His hobbies include immanentizing the eschaton, organizing an LGBT infosec jamboree called #GAYSEC, and making cyberpunk real.
Hook has been phreaking since 1984 and hacking since 1986. They set up the first responder system for counter-bioterrorism throughout the United States.
Brianne Hughes (@E_Briannica) spends her days as a technical editor for Bishop Fox editing formal reports, developing internal resources, and training consultants. By night, she is a historical linguist researching compound morphology. She is executive assistant secretary for the DSNA, an Odd Salon fellow, and on the board of directors for Wordnik Society, Inc.
Harri Hursti began his career as the prodigy behind the first commercial public email and online forum system in Scandinavia. He founded his first company at the age of 13 and went on to co-found EUnet-Finland in his mid twenties. Today, Harri continues to innovate and find solutions to the world’s most vexing problems. He is among the world’s leading authorities in the areas of election voting security and critical infrastructure and network system security.
Sherry Huss (@sherryhuss) was a vice president for Maker Media, Inc. overseeing publishing, e-commerce, and events. She was instrumental in the management and production of Maker Faire and is focused on growing the Make brand throughout the maker ecosystem. She has over 20 years of technology marketing, and event experience and has held senior management positions at MediaLive International, Key3Media, Ziff-Davis, and Softbank. Product marketing and live events have been a focus for Sherry, who was instrumental in launching and managing successful technology and consumer events such as Sun’s JavaOne, Oracle’s iDevelop, O’Reilly Media’s Web 2.0 Summit, and Dwell on Design.
Inverse Phase (@inversephase) is an established chiptune musician, writing music with old computers and game consoles for over 30 years. In that time, he has accumulated a wealth of knowledge - some of it useful, even - on the hardware used to write music and more. Pretty Eight Machine, his tribute to the Nine Inch Nails’ album Pretty Hate Machine on eight 8-bit systems, was recognized by the band itself, and he has taken to researching both the history and technical aspects of retro hardware in an effort to spread that knowledge worldwide.
Alex Ivanov is a New York City-based cybersecurity advisor. Alex conducts research on network infrastructure technologies, and is a specialist in network-based exploitation, as well as a collector of vintage and “bootleg” (copycat) gaming technology, seeking to collect and catalogue the ingenious variety of unauthorized copies of major gaming consoles.
Joel Izlar is a community organizer and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on the intersections between community organizing, mutual aid, and social welfare. He directed a nonprofit program dedicated to closing the digital divide in low-income communities of color in the Deep South.
Tommy Johnson has been making holograms on and off since 1990, when he bought a helium neon laser with his paper route money, followed the instructions in “Amateur Scientist” in the back of Scientific American, and made a couple of holograms. Since then, he has accumulated a basement full of laser parts, and is happy to tell you more than you would ever want to know about flash lamp pumped Q-switched lasers.
Marc Juul (@juul) hacks on open software, hardware, wetware, and community spaces. He has co-founded the hackerspaces Counter Culture Labs and Sudo Room (Oakland, California) and BiologiGaragen and Labitat (Copenhagen, Denmark). For the past few years, he has been working on the realvegancheese.org open GMO project, the peoplesopen.net community mesh network, the disaster.radio low bandwidth off-grid mesh project, the bionet wetware sharing system, and the fread.ink GNU/Linux distro for electronic paper e-book readers.
Jairus Khan is a designer, hacker, noise musician, activist, and recovering goth. He works on Mozilla’s Internet Health Report, an open-source project that documents and examines the health of the Internet as not only a technical issue, but a human one. Before joining Mozilla, he was a strategist for the Internet Society, the nonprofit parent organization of the Internet Engineering Task Force. His resume includes developing open-source rules of engagement for the European Central Bank, managing international concert tours, and unsuccessfully lobbying the Bank of Canada to have Wolverine replace Sir Wilfred Laurier on the Canadian five dollar bill.
Mallory Knodel (@malloryknodel) is a technologist and the head of digital for Article 19, a human rights organization that understands that code is a regulatory mechanism similar to law. She advises the Freedom Online Coalition on human rights respecting cybersecurity policy.
Evan Koblentz (@vcfederation) is executive director of Vintage Computer Federation, author of the book Abacus to Smartphone: The Evolution of Mobile and Portable Computers, and a lifelong Lego fan.
Christopher Korban (@ckorban) is a security engineer at MITRE and, over the past four years, has been working alongside the MITRE ATT&CK frameworks in many different ways. Having started his career at MITRE writing red and blue team tools, he currently leads the operational threat emulation effort within MITRE. Academically, Chris earned his M.S. in information security from Carnegie Mellon University and his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Kousei (@RangerKousei) is a 14-year-old hacker who enjoys vintage computers and mathematics. He started working with computers at age six. Currently, he is working on becoming a software developer.
Bruce Kushnick has been a telecom analyst for 36 years and is the author of The Book of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal & Free the Net, published in 2015. He is the managing director of The IRREGULATORS, a group of telecom experts, analysts, forensic auditors, and lawyers who are working to stop the billions in overcharging, reopen the networks to direct competition, and upgrade them to deliver very high speed fiber to all.
Lady Merlin is director of operations of TOOOL and the first NASA scientist to pilot a remote craft to low earth orbit while controlling it exclusively from the driver’s seat of a 1964 Ford Mustang that she rewired to interface with the remote unit’s controls and telemetry data.
Jeff Landale (@jefflandale) is an independent anti-surveillance organizer and technology policy researcher. He has worked at X-Lab at Penn State University, the New America Foundation, Access Now, Demand Progress, and a variety of unaffiliated projects.
Chief spokesman for the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, Michael Laufer (@MichaelSLaufer) worked in mathematics and high energy physics until he decided to use his background in science to tackle problems of global health and other social issues. Perpetually disruptive, his most recent project makes it possible for people to manufacture their own medications at home. Open-source, and made from off-the-shelf parts, the Apothecary MicroLab puts many medications within the reach of those who would otherwise not have them.
Matt Lavigne is an assembly, C, and C++ programmer. He is a strong supporter of encryption and privacy. He is studying mechanical engineering.
Sarah LeBlanc is a software consultant at ThoughtWorks. She spent two years at one of their largest clients - a global financial institution - creating a platform and its first product, a new system for consumer loans. From there, she started working on projects focusing on using machine learning for fraud and anomaly detection. Sarah finds the most joy learning from her fantastic team members, and coaching and mentoring other developers.
Micah Lee (@micahflee) is a computer security engineer and journalist at The Intercept, a developer of open-source tools like OnionShare, and a Tor Project core contributor. He has been using Qubes since 2014.
Sydney Li (@li_squid) is a staff technologist at EFF. She focuses her efforts towards STARTTLS Everywhere, an initiative to secure communications between email servers, and sometimes works on Certbot. In general, she cares about PKI, data privacy, and making the Internet a little less broken.
William Paul Liggett (@junktext) is the owner and coder of junktext.com, his small business to develop custom open source software, post technical blogs, or perform data analysis on interesting subjects. He obtained his M.S. in information systems technology from George Washington University (GWU), graduating with honors and a recipient of the Elizabeth B. Adams award for academic excellence. Previously, he was a teaching assistant for three of the undergraduate Python courses at GWU, a PHP/JavaScript developer for Sterling Computers, worked at the Pentagon as a technical project manager for the National Military Command Center, and was employed at the Defense Intelligence Agency as a system administrator.
Lauri Love (@NoLove4USgov) is a British security researcher who has spent the last four years fighting off the United States’ attempt to extradite him across the Atlantic. An engineering student, Lauri has been involved in student, Occupy, and homeless activism before his legal battles. In 2014, Love also won an important victory against forced decryption.
Margaret MacAlpine is an election auditing specialist and system testing technologist. She has worked on a variety of projects that include electronic testing of voting registration systems and election security for a variety of countries, states, and counties. She is a highly specialized technologist in testing and performing risk limiting and transitive audits on election results.
Alison Macrina (@flexlibris) joined Tor about three years ago and is now the community team lead, working on things like outreach, training, and community building efforts. She also runs the Library Freedom Project, which helps librarians learn strategies to resist surveillance in their local communities.
Chelsea Manning is a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense who, as a person of conscience, chose to be a government whistleblower. She is a Washington DC-based technologist whose actions have demonstrated the power of individuals to change the world through bravery, conscience, determination, and political activism. Chelsea is a vocal advocate for government transparency, and queer and transgender rights on Twitter and through her op-ed columns for The Guardian and The New York Times.
Alex Marthews is national chair of Restore The Fourth. A dual U.S.-U.K. citizen, Alex studied public policy and ran education and housing nonprofits for ten years before devoting himself full-time in 2012 to the impossible, fascinating, cross-partisan challenge of undermining the surveillance state. His writings have appeared in Slate and The Cambridge Handbook of Surveillance Law.
Nathalie Maréchal (@MarechalPhD) is a writer, researcher, and advocate working at the intersection of human rights advocacy and Internet policy, with particular expertise in the geopolitics of information, 21st century social movements, and corporate social responsibility in the ICT sector. She is a recent Ph.D. graduate of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. She lives in Washington DC.
Freddy Martinez is a technologist and systems engineer. He was previously a Mozilla/Ford Open Web fellow hosted at Freedom of the Press Foundation working to support newsrooms. He also researches police abuses using public records.
Jeanna Matthews (@jeanna_matthews) is an associate professor of computer science at Clarkson University and a 2017-18 fellow at Data & Society where she has been collaborating with the media manipulation team. Her broader research interests include virtualization, cloud computing, computer security, computer networks, operating systems, and algorithmic accountability and transparency. Jeanna received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Maggie Mayhem (@MsMaggieMayhem) is a sex worker, birth worker, and death worker who has been involved with harm reduction since 2003. She has served on the board of directors of SWOP-USA and is the founder of Harm Redux SF, a health and hygiene supply distribution program in San Francisco. Her website is MaggieMayhem.Com.
Max is a TOOOL Boston mainstay and former Antarctic powerlifting champion, a title he garnered in 2006 by dead-lifting 144 penguins, besting the record formerly held by Konstantin Pavlov who lifted 126 penguins in 1973.
Sequoia McDowell is a tech educator, programmer, security enthusiast, and lifelong n00b advocate.
Vitorio Miliano (@vitor_io, @nfctoys) is a researcher and designer. His personal interests intersect enabling lay use of technology (especially emerging technologies), and preservation of outdated physical media and digital artifacts. His professional work supports product teams through design research, user research, participatory design, facilitation, and prototyping.
Mark Milhouse (@amne51ac) is a computer forensics investigator at Edelson PC, where he investigates high-profile tech-related consumer class action cases (namely digital privacy, security, and fraud) and supports ongoing litigation. Prior to his current position, he served in the United States Marines as a 2651 (Intelligence Systems), deploying to Iraq and supporting various elements within II Marine Expeditionary Force. In his free time, he enjoys cycling, traveling, and endless projects like building obscure web apps.
Matt Mitchell is the director of digital safety at Tactical Tech, a CryptoHarlem hacker, and advisor to more nonprofits than you can shake a Twitter bio at.
Keith Monahan has been a participant in hacker conventions including SummerCon, PumpCon, and HOPE starting in the early 1990s. While his professional education and background is in computer science and software quality assurance, he plays in the hobbyist electronics design space. His blog, techtravels.org, details often Amiga-focused electronics projects spanning a dozen years. He is a hacker in every sense of the word.
Alex Muentz (@alexmuentz) is a security architect for Linode and a lawyer with a fondness for seersucker in this heat. He’s spoken at a bunch of conferences you’ve heard of (HOPE, Defcon, ShmooCon) and a few you haven’t.
Daniel Nazer (@danielnazer) is a senior staff attorney and the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He works to keep patent laws - and software patents in particular - from interfering with freedom to code and tinker. Before joining EFF, Daniel was a residential fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. He has also worked at the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project and in private practice at Keker and Van Nest, LLP.
Nikgod is a reformed network engineer who occasionally pretends to know how radio works. Once he figured out how to hack AOL 2.0 parental controls, the Internet scarred him for life. Nikgod functions as the chief engineer of Radio Statler, coming up with solutions to the hard technical problems, and running up a tab on his credit cards in the process.
Nite 0wl (@nite0wl) is a lockpicker, a locksmith, a whisky aficionado, and he has secretly been carrying the Hope Diamond in his beard since he stole it in 1987. (The one now on display in Washington’s National Museum of Natural History is a copy that he made by hand-filing leaded glass.)
David Noever is a security researcher and has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific research articles and book chapters. He received his Ph.D. from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in theoretical physics, and B.S. from Princeton University. His primary research centers on machine learning and data mining for analytics and intelligence gathering. He has worked at NASA and various startups providing Hadoop toolkits for uncovering cyber threats.
NoHackMe: You’d better not hack him... it’s right there in his name. Seriously, have you heard the stories of what happens if you try? That’s right, you haven’t... those who attempt to are never heard from again.
Grace North (@brazenqueer, @freejeremynet) is an anarchist and prison abolitionist who has led the Jeremy Hammond Support Network for the past five years. Jeremy Hammond is an imprisoned anarchist and hacktivist who was the source for WikiLeaks’ Global Intelligence Files, which revealed massive corporate and government surveillance of activists and private citizens.
Both Hermione Granger and Vinz Clortho the Keymaster have nothing on Deviant Ollam. He appears, looks at an elevator, and produces the proper key. It fits perfectly every time, taking him to Platform 9 3/4. Unlike Hermione Granger, Deviant doesn’t need the Alohomora spell to open doors. He just spits whiskey at them and Voila! They open! The proof is on the Internet, folks: you want pictures, it’s got video. He even does it all in a suit with proper glassware.
Kurt Opsahl (@kurtopsahl) is the deputy executive director and general counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In addition to representing clients on civil liberties, free speech, and privacy law, Kurt counsels on EFF projects and initiatives. He is the lead attorney on the Coders’ Rights Project. Before joining EFF, he worked at Perkins Coie, where he represented technology clients with respect to intellectual property, privacy, defamation, and other online liability matters, including working on Kelly v. Arribasoft, MGM v. Grokster and CoStar v. LoopNet. Kurt received his law degree from Boalt Hall, and undergraduate degree from U.C. Santa Cruz. He is the co-author of Electronic Media and Privacy Law Handbook.
Pete Tridish has built studios, raised towers, drafted regulations, passed a law through Congress, been the plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against media consolidation, started nonprofits, and been arrested as a protester on various occasions. He has been a radio pirate, a policy advocate for community media, a carpenter, an environmental educator, a solar energy system installer, a squatter, a homeless shelter volunteer, and an activist in many social movements since the age of 16.
Nathan Proctor (@nProctor) directs U.S. PIRG’s efforts to support the Right to Repair. U.S. PIRG is a national network of state advocacy organizations that uses the time-tested tools of investigative research, media exposes, grassroots organizing, advocacy, and litigation to stand up to powerful interests to win results. Nathan brings 13 years of campaign experience to the position and lives in Arlington, Massachusetts.
Cooper Quintin (@cooperq) is a security researcher and technologist at EFF. He has worked on projects such as Privacy Badger, Canary Watch, and analysis of state-sponsored malware. He has also performed security trainings for activists, nonprofit workers, and ordinary folks around the world. He previously worked building websites for nonprofits, such as Greenpeace, Adbusters, and the Chelsea Manning Support Network. He also was a co-founder of the Hackbloc hacktivist collective.
TehRabbitt is a systems engineer by day, lock enthusiast by night. He got introduced to lock picking at HOPE Number Nine and later became the co-founder of the New Jersey chapter of TOOOL. In his free time away from patching and designing systems, he enjoys teaching others the joys of locksport and 3D printing.
Steven Rambam (@stevenrambam) is the founder and CEO of Pallorium, Inc. (pallorium.com), a licensed investigative agency with offices and affiliates worldwide. Since 1981, Pallorium’s investigators have successfully closed more than 10,000 cases, ranging from homicide and death claim investigations to missing persons cases to the investigation of various types of sophisticated financial frauds. Steven is also education chairman of the Fraternal Order of Investigators, co-coordinator of the 2018 Investigators’ Superconference (2018investigators.com), and a TV and radio show host. So, like Allan Pinkerton, Steven never sleeps.
Lady Red is an artist, maker, programmer, and flightless bird. She nests in San Francisco where she frequents the Noisebridge hackerspace and starts more projects than she could possibly finish.
Laura Reed (@lauraannreed) is the senior research analyst with the Ranking Digital Rights project, responsible for conducting research for the Corporate Accountability Index, helping develop index methodology, and coordinating the work of RDR’s external researchers. Before joining RDR, Laura conducted research on the intersection of human rights and information technology for several research institutes. As a research analyst with Data & Society, she wrote about the role of algorithms in shaping digital media and the public sphere. Previously, Laura was a research analyst for Freedom on the Net, Freedom House’s annual index of global Internet freedom. In this capacity, she collaborated with local researchers around the world to assess Internet users’ access to technology, freedom of expression, and the right to privacy.
Ed Ryan is a New York intellectual property attorney specializing in patents with a background in physics. Ed’s practice deals with technologies including circuit design, hula hoops, digital broadcast, and (omg) software patents.
Saint has six CVE>7 0days and has been obsessed with programming since 1995. They started the first hackerspace within 500 very lonely miles in Montana. Literate.
Karen M. Sandler is the executive director of Conservancy. Karen is known as a cyborg lawyer for her advocacy for free software, particularly in relation to the software on medical devices. Prior to joining Conservancy, she was executive director of the GNOME Foundation. Before that, she was general counsel of the Software Freedom Law Center. Karen co-organizes Outreachy, the award-winning outreach program for women globally and for people of color who are underrepresented in U.S. tech. Karen received the FSF’s Award for the Advancement of Free Software and is a recipient of the O’Reilly Open-Source Award.
Roel Schouwenberg (@Schouw) is the intelligence and research director at Celsus Advisory Group. He has over 20 years of experience in threat intelligence and security research. Roel has a special interest in targeted attacks and long-term campaigns that are not restricted to a single domain.
Jason Scott (@textfiles) is the free-range archivist and software curator at the Internet Archive. When he’s not uploading terabytes of digital history into the Internet Archive’s disk servers, he’s helping hundreds of others do the same. He plays entirely too much PUBG.
Will Scott (@willscott) is a security postdoc at the University of Michigan. He researches censorship, private communication, and connectivity in extreme environments. He has collaborated with the Open Observatory of Network Interference for the last three years.
Martin Shelton is a user researcher assisting journalists and at-risk groups with their security concerns.
Sidepocket (@sidepock_) is a co-founder of Defcon 201, an open group for hacker workshop projects in northeast New Jersey. He loves to help people get better at whatever they want to do and learn.
simplymathematics is a data scientist with a degree in applied math from the New York City College of Technology. He is working on mesh networks with groups across North and South America, building a community network mapping tool with thenextbillion.online, and keeping an eye on the surveillance state.
Caroline Sinders is a machine learning design researcher and artist. She is the founder of Convocation Design and Research, an agency focusing on the intersections of machine learning, user research, designing for public good, and solving communication problems. As a designer and researcher, she’s worked with groups like Amnesty International, Intel, IBM Watson, the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as others. Caroline holds a masters from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Zachary (Zac) Slade is a founder of Free Geek Arkansas and serves as its vice chair and director of education. He’s also a professional and competitive software developer, with a passion for science and technology, social services, and environmental protection.
Joel Preston Smith is the director of Frontline Wellness United, a nonprofit which provides medic training, healthcare, and mental health support to activists, whistleblowers, and hackers. In the 1980s, the U.S. Army trained him to be an infiltrator at antiwar rallies, after which he became a conscientious objector. Since then, the training he received has been very useful in sabotaging the efforts of infiltrators.
Ninjas vanish in a puff of smoke... but this TOOOL member named Smoke Legend not only can appear in a puff of smoke, but also open locks with a puff of smoke, makes puppies wag their tails with a puff of smoke, and leaps relatively run-down midtown New York City hotels in a puff of smoke... before ultimately vanishing in a puff of smoke.
Aditya K. Sood (@adityaksood) is an information security practitioner and researcher by profession. He has research interests in malware automation and analysis, cloud security, secure software design, and cybercrime research. He is also a founder of SecNiche Security Labs, an independent web portal for sharing research with the security community. Currently, he directs the security efforts for the cloud security division at Symantec. He obtained his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in computer sciences.
Spam is one half of the duo that brings locks, liquor, and love to many events here for decades. How does he look so young?
Richard Stallman launched the free software movement in 1983 and started the development of the GNU operating system (www.gnu.org) in 1984. (GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, with or without changes. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today.) He has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award, and the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several doctorates honoris causa, and has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.
Amie Stepanovich (@astepanovich) is U.S. policy manager at Access Now, where she manages and develops the organization’s U.S. policy and leads global projects at the intersection of human rights and government surveillance. Amie is a board member of the Internet Education Foundation and an advisory board member for the Future of Privacy Forum.
Lisha Sterling (@lishevita) is the executive director of Geeks Without Bounds, a nonprofit organization which supports open-source humanitarian technology in low resource areas. She has worked on infrastructure projects in low resource countries, technology solutions for disaster response, and mobile phone-based information resources for people living in refugee camps. She spent six months at Standing Rock and then spent much of the following year helping lawyers and activists improve their digital security and diagnose potential attacks on their devices. She also advised technical volunteers at other water protector camps across the U.S.
Stoppay (@stoppay) joined Radio Statler during The Next HOPE and manages the website. He works best under pressure and little sleep while creating the site and content on the fly. He is known to do on-air interviews from time to time and plays the devil’s advocate regardless of his opinion on the subject.
Brian L. Stuart is an associate teaching professor of computer science at Drexel University. He holds a B.S. in computer science and electrical engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, an M.S. in electrical engineering from Notre Dame, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Purdue University. He has been researching the ENIAC for two years.
Kit Stubbs (@vortacist) is a non-binary/queer/femme maker and entrepreneur who’s more interested in people than in technology. After earning their Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, Kit is now the founder and executive director of the Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity (effing.org), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to foster sex-positive art and education. Kit has spoken on gender, sexuality, and sex/tech at events across the U.S. They blog about technological empowerment for sexuality and pleasure (toymakerproject.com) and coorganize teasecraft, a meetup group for sex/kink-positive makers and hackers (teasecraft.com).
Michael "Sveder" Sverdlin (@msveder) is a software developer, maker, lecturer, startup mentor, and lockpicker. He is a 12-year veteran of the Israeli startup scene, both as an early employee creating outstanding development teams and as startup mentor through the Google Launchpad program, under which he helped tens of startups with their MVPs, technology choices, and product ideas. As a software developer, Michael shipped products on all the major consumer platforms: the web, iOS, Android, and Windows. He’s also worked on backend systems, OS internals, and cybersecurity. His work experience includes startups like VDOO, Lightricks, and Neocleus, as well as big organizations like Intel and the Israeli Defense Forces intelligence unit.
Kat Sweet works for Duo Security as an information security analyst. A passionate security educator, she is heavily involved in building her team’s employee security awareness and engagement program. When she’s not in security mode, you can often find her bursting into song or picking unsuspecting locks.
George Tankersley (@gtank__) is a cryptography engineer who currently spends his days turning math into magic Internet money. In the realm of cryptography, he^Ys previously worked on Certificate Transparency, TLS, and Tor-related projects, as well as contributing cryptographic design to a variety of other open source security and infrastructure systems.
TechDarko (@techdarko) is an information security engineer in San Francisco and technology polymath. Created in the lab of a mad scientist in New Jersey, he craves pizza, bagels, diners, and people with brains. He dabbles in emergency medicine, amateur radio, professional audio and lighting, electronics, broadcast radio, and helping nonprofits adopt new technology. A man of uncommon tastes, he is best bribed/thanked with good ciders and mead. You can often find him at HOPE by hurting yourself (seriously - don’t interrupt his drinking time). TechDarko is a founding member of Radio Statler.
TheSleep [bio redacted by order of the Department of Hopeland Security, directive 456.31D(4) - Secrecy Surrounding Details of Awesomeness So Great That They Would Make Others’ Heads Explode]
Cody Thomas (@its_a_feature_) works on the MITRE ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) framework where he published the Mac and Linux techniques. He also performs threat-based adversary emulation operations to help blue teams create analytics for detecting malicious behaviors. Cody also develops red-team oriented security tools to help with adversary emulation. Before joining MITRE, Cody received his M.S. in information security from Carnegie Mellon University and his B.S. in electrical/computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
Phillip Torrone (@ptorrone) is a contributing author for 2600 Magazine (“Citizen Engineer”) and previously coordinated the Free Kevin events and live Off The Hook radio broadcasts. Phillip was an editor at Popular Science Magazine, senior editor at Make Magazine, and founder of Hackaday.com. Phillip currently works with Ladyada on the art project called “Adafruit.”
TProphet (@TProphet), also known as The Telecom Informer, is a regular columnist for 2600 Magazine. As a young phreak, he began exploring the world through the phone system. He has now visited all seven continents and writes the popular Seat31B travel blog.
Sue Udry’s career in public service spans four decades and includes advocating for peace, civil rights, and economic justice. As executive director of Defending Rights and Dissent, Sue leads the organization’s advocacy and public education efforts to protect and strengthen civil society and challenge political repression.
Alexander Urbelis (@aurbelis) is a partner at the Blackstone Law Group LLP in New York, and an attorney who focuses on information security and investigations. A frequent media commentator on the subjects of privacy and security, his writing has appeared on CNN, The Intercept, and 2600 Magazine. Alex is also a regular contributor to Off The Hook. Over the years, he has worked for the U.S. Army, Dartmouth College’s Institute for Security Technology Studies (a federally funded cybersecurity and counterterrorism research center), the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and as information security counsel and chief compliance officer of the world’s largest luxury conglomerates.
danae valentina (@tapia) is a Chilean working class feminist anarchist writer. She is an active member of the Riseup Collective and a postgraduate research student in comparative literature at Utrecht University. Her blog is at danae.noblogs.org/.
Filippo Valsorda (@FiloSottile) is a cryptography engineer, building and breaking systems in Go. He works at Google on the Go Open-Source Project, where he owns the Go cryptography standard libraries. Previously at Cloudflare, he developed its experimental TLS 1.3 stack and kicked DNSSEC until it became something deployable. Nevertheless, he’s probably best known for making popular online vulnerability tests, including the original Heartbleed test.
Sean Vitka lobbies Congress on surveillance and Internet freedom issues for Demand Progress. He is a lawyer and has also worked as a freelance journalist, as federal policy manager for the Sunlight Foundation, and has represented CREDO Action and Fight for the Future on the Hill.
Matthew Weinberg is a security analyst at a well known financial services company. Prior to this position, he was a government consultant and a student teacher in the fields of international security and information policy. He’s spent a lifetime learning (too many) human and computer languages in strange places. He has a B.A. in international relations from Tufts University, and an M.A. in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Marcy Wheeler covers national security and civil liberties at emptywheel.net. She is on the advisory committee for the Fourth Amendment caucus, is a senior fellow at GWU’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, and was recently recognized as an Internet human rights hero by AccessNow.
Steph Whited (@walnutwordsalad) directs communications at the Tor Project. She joined Tor in June 2017, and she has led communications for nonprofits since 2010.
Kyle Wiens (@kwiens) has dedicated his life to defeating the second law of thermodynamics, a battle fought in the courtroom as often as in the workshop. He has testified on electronic exports to the International Trade Commission and is actively involved in developing global environmental standards. The Right to Repair campaign has, so far, successfully legalized cell phone unlocking and tractor repair.
Glenn Willen is a highly-trained blockchain professional, he swears. In his day job, he is a software engineer on Bitcoin-related projects. He was a technical advisor on the Glacier Protocol, a set of recommended best practices for the offline storage of people’s personal bitcoins. (He also sings bass.)
Thomas Witherspoon (@SWLingDotCom) is the founder and curator of the Radio Spectrum Archive and the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive. He’s also the founder of the nonprofit organization, Ears To Our World (ETOW), which distributes useful technologies like self-powered radios and DIY flashlights to schools and communities in remote impoverished parts of the world. Thomas has been a passionate supporter of shortwave radio, amateur radio, international broadcasting, and free press for many years, and actively blogs on The SWLing Post, an educational and hobbyist radio website. He holds the amateur radio callsigns K4SWL and M0CYI.
Serge Wroclawski is a long time hacker, as well as a free software and free culture activist. In his commitment to promoting these topics, he has written code and helped found and run nonprofits. He’s a passionate geek, with a particular affinity to challenging axioms, which extends to those of the inner world and mind. That passion led him to become a certified hypnotist and NLP practitioner.
Interdisciplinary autodidacts always look bad on paper. Good hackers know they know not, and xio (@XioNYC) is of that rare breed which knows not that they know. He has experienced eight years of digital talking books from pre-production to shipped product, 12 years as an accessibility specialist, 16 years of video editing and DVD authoring, and over 24 years of broadcast radio, as well as a lifetime at the QWERTY and in deep thought.
Johnny Xmas (@j0hnnyXm4s) is a security researcher for the U.S.-based ICS cybersecurity and predictive analytics firm Uptake Technologies, and is most famous for his work on the 2015-16 TSA master key leaks presented at past HOPE conferences. He’s been speaking internationally on the topics of hacking, privacy, information security, and career advancement for nearly 20 years, both in and very far outside of the information security community - and attending HOPE since H2K! His infamous mixture of humor, raw sincerity, and honest love of people often leads to lighthearted but, at their cores, serious discussions revolving around our innate desires to get in our own way.
Yan Zhu (@bcrypt) is the chief security officer at Brave Software and was previously a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She has worked on numerous open source security and privacy projects, including Let's Encrypt, HTTPS Everywhere, SecureDrop, and Privacy Badger. She has also served as a board member of the Zcash Foundation, an elected member of the W3C Technical Architecture Group, a CFP reviewer for DEF CON, and a board member of Noisebridge Hackerspace. She is a high school dropout and holds a B.S. in physics from MIT.