Speakers · Geek Comedy Tour 3000

Mark Abene has been involved in computers, telecom, and electronics for as long as he can remember. He was probably born with a phone in one hand and a soldering iron in the other, but no one knows for sure except his mom. In his teenage years, as the hacker Phiber Optik, he inspired a generation to explore the inner workings of the vast telephone network in all its intricacies, all the while honing skills at both defeating and recognizing the flaws in the security systems of large packet data networks. In his professional life, it's these very skills that he uses to secure some of the most sensitive systems and networks in the private sector, as well as lecture on the subject to those responsible for the systems. It's a living.

Raven Alder (raven@oneeyedcrow.net) is a somewhat cynical security geek with a focus on backbone network engineering. Her recent work on penetration testing routing and switching infrastructure has rocked the ISP boat a bit, but she believes that a well-tested backbone is more likely to be a secure backbone. She has coauthored books on the security tools Snort and Nessus and has spoken at many conferences, including previous Black Hat conferences, Linux World Expo, and DefCon. For her next trick, she intends to test implementations of cryptography on critical infrastructure devices.

From his early days as an introverted geek to his current days as a funky-haired inventor, Mitch Altman has had many and varied accomplishments, such as: cofounder of the fun protest; Hash Wednesday at the University of Illinois in Urbana; co-inventor of virtual reality; founder of a nonprofit vegetarian restaurant; cofounder of 3ware, a Silicon Valley startup that makes disk controllers; founder of a rural queer arts commune; and inventor of TV-B-Gone, a popular keychain that turns off televisions in public places. This invention propelled Mitch into the media spotlight around the world.

Skip Arey is the author of Radio Monitoring: The How-To Guide. He is regularly published in various radio hobby communications magazines. Skip is a life member of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and holds an extra class amateur (ham) radio license and a commercial FCC general radio operator's license. He is particularly interested in QRP - the art and science of communicating great distances via amateur radio using extremely low power.

Born in Moscow, Arseny has been a curious person all his life. In the late 1990s Arseny attended his first 2600 meeting and has been part of the scene since. Although usually quiet on Off The Hook, he takes an active role behind the scenes of 2600. Besides computers, Arseny is interested in film, traveling, the environment, and online culture. He keeps an online journal at xpeh.net.

Joseph Battaglia aka "Redbird," is a regular on the Off The Hook radio show and has been involved in the New York City hacker community for several years. Last year, he presented at the European hacker conferences What The Hack! and the Chaos Communication Congress. His interest in technology is diverse and includes the fields of RF engineering, open source software, and security. Joseph currently holds an extra class amateur radio license and is active within the ham radio community. He is working in information security this summer for a Fortune 100 company. Joseph is entering his junior year pursuing an electrical engineering degree at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Fred Benenson cofounded Free Culture @ NYU during his senior year while he was studying philosophy and computer science. After graduating in 2005, he worked as the free culture intern at Creative Commons where he worked on promoting Creative Commons in the real world. He is currently a fellow at Creative Commons and will be attending NYU's ITP program at the Tisch School of the Arts where he hopes to work on digital art and technology in order to further the free culture movement.

bernieS has been hacking telephones, radios, computers, and government authorities for far too long - sometimes pushing the envelope too far. In 1995 he was imprisoned for a year and a half by the Secret Service for merely possessing communications hardware and software they claimed was "dangerous" - and for blowing the cover of some of their special agents. Eventually the government admitted "there were no victims in the offense" and that they were more concerned about his exposing their covert activities. Bernie continues to investigate and report on communications technologies and on government activities the authorities would rather keep hidden.

Jello Biafra has now appeared at four HOPE conferences, bridging gaps between worlds that might otherwise never have met. He once was lead singer for a band called the Dead Kennedys (music your parents may have listened to). The band broke up while being prosecuted for allegedly distributing harmful material via one of their albums. The case was won but the Dead Kennedys couldn't survive the expense of the trial. Jello became a spoken word artist, waking people up around the world to the wide assortment of injustices so many of us face. He knows how the media industry and the government work and he knows how they can be hacked.

Nick Binary is a founding member of the Boston hacker space "The Hasty Pastry," a CCIE certified network engineer, and a hardware hacker. He is also a member of Sonic Beating, a Boston-based psytrance group and with his sound pump is involved in the Gaian Mind Fest, Firefly, and OmniDance events.

Black Ratchet is just another phone phreak from Boston. He enjoys computers, radios, and, of course, anything remotely related to the public switched telephone network. He has been playing with telephones since he was 11 and, after a somewhat lengthy sabbatical in college, had a relapse and returned to his old ways in late 2003. He is the organizer and webmaster of Yet Another Payphone List at http://www.yapl.org and is an active member of the Digital Dawg Pound at http://www.binrev.com. He can be found at his website (http://www.blackratchet.org) and on the BinRev forums at http://forums.binrev.com.

Matt Blaze is an associate professor of computer and information sciences and director of the Trusted Network Eavesdropping and Countermeasures project at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include secure systems, cryptology and cryptographic protocols, and large-scale systems.

Joshua Brashars is a telecommunications specialist in San Diego. He spends his time working with Secure Science Corporation's External Threat Assessment Team, breaking things apart and taping them back together. Joshua has contributed to several books with Syngress Publishing and has presented at conferences and universities across the United States.

V. Alex Brennen (VAB) is a programmer and systems administrator at MIT. He has been involved in the free software community for more than ten years. He has been producing software, patches, and documentation for most of that time. Before joining the MIT community, Alex worked for an IBM systems integrator, The Pediatric Oncology Group, and The University of Florida. His specialization is in medical information systems, peer to peer networking, and cryptographic solutions.

Dennis Brown is a network and information security enthusiast with a knack for analyzing large data sets. He makes a living as a security intelligence engineer for VeriSign Inc.'s MSS division, focused on network security and analytics. In his spare time he can be found tinkering with a variety of things... playing with IPv6 technologies, finding creative uses for VoIP, and statistically deriving the ultimate fantasy football team.

Stephen Cass was born and raised in Dublin but now hails from Brooklyn. He cut his programming teeth on a TI 99-4/A and a totally pimped out BBC Model B+, but is currently a Mac man. He covers computers and space (among other things) for IEEE Spectrum, the flagship publication of the nice people who brought you 802.11, 1394, 1003, 754, and 802.3. He firmly believes that one day he will complete Jet Set Willy.

Mike Castleman (mlc@2600.com) has been involved with the radio program Off The Hook since 2000 and even has a signed letter proving this for the benefit of the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control. He is also the Staff Hacker (really) for the independent radio/TV newshour Democracy Now!

Richard Cheshire (The Cheshire Catalyst) was a publisher of the legendary TAP newsletter. He has also been published in 2600, Monitoring Times, and the now defunct Teleconnect. He lives in Florida where he claims to have his very own area code. He currently champions Internet accessibility across the digital divide.

Catonic Cinotac has been a systems administrator, all-around network monkey, and sometimes consultant for the past seven years and has been working with electronics and ham radio even longer. Through several present and former employers, he has been able to apply his diverse skills by designing and implementing several wireless ISP networks, providing support for wireless product testing, and keeping the servers up and running through a four hour power outage without A/C when the generator refuses to crank. When not in front of computers, Catonic likes to attend hacker cons in the southeastern United States where he has been known to speak on occasion.

Sandy Clark is a visiting scholar in the Distributed Systems Lab at the University of Pennsylvania and a computing systems manager at Princeton University. Her research interests include human scale and network security along with privacy and risk evaluation.

Jorge Cortell (FallenAngel) studied computing at Oxford University. He taught "intellectual property" for five years and received a masters degree in online multimedia applications at Polytechnic University of Valencia until he was forced to resign last year due to pressure from the MPAA and the Spanish Collecting Societies over a lecture on P2P networks. Since then Jorge has started a free software company and a free music company, putting his money where his mouth was.

Eric Cronin is a Ph.D. candidate in computer and information sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include network security, privacy, and distributed systems.

Dharma Dailey is the Prometheus Radio Project's Spectrum Mama. In the mid 1990s, Dharma learned about an LPFM pirate radio station that broadcast out of a housing project in Illinois. As a teen mom who grew up in low income housing projects, she immediately recognized the potential of LPFM and wondered why something that was so good for community building was illegal for those who could use it most. Airwave access for everyone is still her dream.

Jason R. Davis holds a bachelor's degree of science in network and communications management. Also, as a part owner of a Chicago based IS firm, he has been working with password cracking methodology and its application for over three years. His latest endeavor includes TMTO database building (http://www.md5lookup.com).

Dragorn is one of the founders of the New York Computer Community Connection Project (NYCCCP), the author of the wireless sniffer Kismet, and the person in charge of the wireless LAN at HOPE Number Six.

Mike Dvorak is currently working towards a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. He has been using free and open source software for over six years. Before continuing his education, Mike worked at a Department of Energy lab where he used Linux clusters to run climate models and other scientific codes. Over the past year, he has taught himself GIS technology and will be using GIS to quantify how much wind energy is available over our oceans. He also enjoys using GIS and GPS to map neighborhood pollution and track his bicycle trips.

Daniel Estrada has been working with small and medium-sized businesses for over seven years, providing a wide range of technology consulting services. Based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, D.C. Estrada Information Technology also offers a variety of IT security services to local and international companies, from technical threat assessments and penetration testing to user training and policy implementation. Daniel has given presentations on a number of IT topics, including American and European security regulations, wireless security, and social engineering. In addition, he has presented technical recommendations to management groups at large corporations such as Steelcase and IBM.

Emmanuel Goldstein is the editor and cofounder of 2600 and the chief organizer of these here HOPE conferences. He's been involved with radio as well, hosting WBAI's Off The Hook and WUSB's Off The Wall. He doesn't seek out trouble but it inevitably meets up with him in the course of his travels. An explorer of phones, tunnels, streets, the "system," and the world, Emmanuel seeks to protect privacy and has no intention of becoming a number.

Rop Gonggrijp was editor and publisher of the Dutch hacker magazine Hack-Tic from 1989 to 1993. He also cofounded XS4ALL (one of the first European ISPs) and cofounded ITSX (a computer security consultancy). Along with partner Barry Wels, Rop initiated work on the CryptoPhone in 2001.

Alvaro Gonzalez (AndOr) is a programmer and network specialist who has been involved in Hacklabs, Hackmeetings, LAN parties, Copyleft, and wireless groups in Spain for almost a decade. He has worked for several large corporations in technology related fields (including Cap Gemini and Adecco). Currently Alvaro is the head of the IT department at Kanteron Systems.

Hailing from New Jersey, Gonzo is a freelance writer/journalist, researcher, urban explorer, bibliophile, Underground veteran, and has hosted panels at previous HOPE conferences. He is editor-in-chief of the ezine reprimandmag.com and is a member of Patterns of Recognition.

Roland Gratzer is writer, artist, musician, and self-defined "communication gland." Roland joined monochrom in 2005. He writes for a couple of online/print magazines and is currently researching about blogs and blog culture for the University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria. Recurring topics in his work are: progressive theater, media theory, popular culture studies, and guerrilla media tactics.

Having a two path career Gerald Greene spent 20 years in education and 20 years in computers. With an MS in special education from the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Level A Certification, he has taught and/or supervised at the district, regional services agency, and college levels. His computer career evolved to regional and multiple state vertical market sales in the automotive area. From childhood educational failures he has "walked the walk" himself and his "bottom-up" perspective drives him to help the ever-growing numbers of individuals whose education and life function are limited because of low reading function. He achieves this using text-to-speech technology.

Johannes Grenzfurthner is writer, artist, director, and DIY researcher. He founded monochrom in 1993. Johannes published numerous books, essays, and articles on contemporary art, activism, technology, science, and philosophy. Recurring topics in his work are: technology misappropriation, media theory, viral resistance, radical postmodernism, popular culture studies, science fiction, and debate about copyright.

Andy Gunn joined the Prometheus Radio Project as the Technical Organizer in February of 2005. His primary responsibility has been to provide technical support to stations and applicants, as well as organize the technical aspects of barnraisings and the other projects Prometheus takes on. This includes expanding the Technical Services Program and creating documentation that people - not just engineers - can use to build their stations and train their staff. Andy believes strongly in demystifying the technology that surrounds us and enabling people to take on technical projects that are an excellent learning experience. He holds a BS in computer engineering from Columbia University.

Gweeds is a hacker chef based out of San Francisco's only hacker bed and breakfast, Unicorn Precinct XIII (http://www.up13.org). He apprenticed in the research kitchen of Heston Blumenthal's Michelin starred restaurant The Fat Duck (http://fatduck.co.uk), aka the bleeding edge of the molecular gastronomy movement. Gweeds is a Cancer and enjoys long meals prepared in a kitchen with friends, cycling, and edible solder.

Seth Hardy stopped liking to write self-promoting blurbs a long time ago. In fact, he may never have liked it to begin with. He acknowledges that there's already far too much information about him on the intarweb and encourages people to do their own research if they're interested.

Michael Hart started Project Gutenberg in 1971 when he was given an operator's account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois. Michael decided there was nothing he could do in the way of "normal computing" that would repay the huge value of the computer time he had been given. So he had to create $100,000,000 worth of value in some other manner. An hour and 47 minutes later he announced that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. He then proceeded to type in the Declaration of Independence which was posted as the first electronic book, or eBook. The premise on which Michael based Project Gutenberg was that anything that can be entered into a computer can be reproduced indefinitely - what Michael termed "replicator technology." The concept of replicator technology is simple: once a book or any other item (including pictures, sounds, and even three dimensional items) can be stored in a computer, then any number of copies can and will be available. Everyone, everywhere, can have a copy of a book that has been entered into a computer. Creating a free electronic library has been Michael's life mission and work. More information can be found at http://hart.pglaf.org.

Aldert Hazenberg started in 1993 with networking and security for an international software company and evolved into project management and liaison officer between development, marketing, sales departments, and enterprise customers at an international IT services organization. He has worked for and at several international computer related congresses such as HAL2001 and the CCC. His role was coordinator, team leader, and inspirator. Aldert is involved in various activities (quality assurance, usability testing, and user interface improvements) in the areas of wireless (OLSR, meshing software), encryption (OTR, VPN), and several other (open source and commercial) software projects. He is currently responsible for launching a streaming and download platform that utilizes payment by phone instead of credit cards.

Harry Hoffman is one of the main people involved with Philadelphia Walnut Factory. When not trying to acquire new gear for the space he spends his time doing network security and Unix administration.

Sellam Ismail (http://www.sellam.com) is a computer historian and consultant who maintains the largest privately held collection of vintage computers on the planet. He founded the Vintage Computer Festival (http://www.vintage.org), an international event that celebrates the history of computing and, through his business VintageTech (http://www.vintagetech.com), provides consulting services to patent attorneys, Hollywood, government, and academia.

Lance James, author of Phishing Exposed, has been involved in information security for more than ten years, providing consultation to governments, startups, Fortune 500 companies, and America's top financial institutions. He has devised techniques to prevent, track, and detect online fraud as a chief scientist with Secure Science Corporation (http://www.securescience.net), a security software company that is busy tracking over 53 phishing groups.)

Jeopardy Jim is a longtime Off The Hook/2600 operative and former MTA employee. Interestingly, he is a near-double for hacker legend Red Balaclava despite sharing a father and a mother.

3ric Johanson (ericj@shmoo.com) has been involved with breaking things for many years. A Shmoo Group member, he's been involved with several successful projects, including Hackerbot, Vend-O-Rand, and Rainbow Tables. By day he is an independent security consultant specializing in penetration testing and application assessments. By night he has been spotted wearing his "so sue me already" t-shirt while drinking over-caffeinated coffees. Some of his recent public work has included international domain name vulnerabilities. His hobbies include building and breaking things in his underground lair in Seattle. He hates most people, so expect no compassion from him.

Brad Johnson (The Cunctator) is a database programmer, author, scientist, and two-time HOPE conference speaker. His books (as Adam Brate), Making the Cisco Connection and Technomanifestos: Visions of the Information Revolutionaries, tell the history of the computing age. Pretty soon lower Manhattan will be engulfed by the rising seas, so let's enjoy it while we can.

Karamoon works as a sysadmin and IT trainer in the U.K. His life changed dramatically when he picked up a copy of 2600 in a Tokyo bookstore.... Karamoon's main interest is the creative use of technology to bring about social change. He has traveled to 26 countries and caused trouble in every one of them. Karamoon thinks hacker conferences may be the only way to save the world. He spends a lot of time trying to persuade Europeans to attend American hacker conferences and vice versa, usually with little success.

Gerard P. "Jerry" Keenan is considered to be the investigative community's premier expert on military records and military-related investigations. He is a native of Paterson, New Jersey and a retired 20 year U.S. Navy veteran who has served his country in numerous capacities, primarily overseas and aboard forward-deployed staffs. After retirement Jerry served as a civilian security specialist on the staff of the Commander in Chief - U.S. Naval Forces Europe. While in London, he developed, maintained, and administered the USN's first centralized European security training program for shore-based personnel. Jerry was also responsible for organizing security training for all U.S. military and civil service personnel in the London area and providing security briefings to Flag and General rank officers and senior government officials, as well as embassy personnel. He coordinated security clearance background investigations on U.S. military and civilian personnel in addition to investigating security breaches and classified information/material compromises. Jerry currently provides his services to law enforcement, private investigators, security firms, government agencies, film companies, and TV/radio news. His research has helped to expose dozens of military frauds and numerous fraudulent special forces and prisoner of war claims.

Jason Kroll spoke at The Fifth HOPE about the incentive structures used to influence people and the incentives faced by institutions in their struggle to control technology through legal means. Here he is speaking about the sense of alienation that stems from the undisguised corruption behind the IP property grab and how it conflicts with our sense of social responsibility. Both presentations were inspired by research into the economics of science (BA in economics from the University of Washington at Seattle) and the computational complexity of economic problems (MS in computer science at Tufts).

Ladyada is an electrical engineer and hardware hacker whose interests include subversive technologies, hacking consumer electronics, DIY kits, and open source hardware. She is currently an R&D fellow at Eyebeam, a local new media gallery.

John Leita is webmaster of lioddities.com and coeditor of Long Island Oddities magazine. Both take readers on a journey to the forbidden, a world of mysterious places all around us.

Laura Leita has been interested in urban exploring for many years. She has also been coeditor of Long Island Oddities for almost three years and has been in many of this world's interesting and abandoned places. Laura employs photography as an art form to document historic abandoned places.

Leo, a.k.a. I-Ball, born in Moscow, has given talks at previous HOPE conferences, is active in the phreaking community, is a notorious Mountain Dew addict, and is also a member of Patterns of Recognition.

LexIcon is an artist based in New York. Before moving up the coast he was heavily involved in the rebuilding of attendance at North Carolina's 2600 meetings by promoting a sense of fairness, interdependence, and community on and off line. Together with others from that area, he was instrumental in starting the Carolinacon regional technology conference and continues to help out as much as possible from a distance.

LinH has held an amateur radio license since 1990 but has been involved in radio in various forms since the age of five. He has worked with a BSRG repeater group that maintains 11 repeaters as well as atlantafreenet.org. Lin also cowrote the 900mhz band plan for the South Eastern Repeater Association. This band plan has been adopted in whole or in part by 70 percent of the repeater coordinating bodies in the U.S.

Kall Loper has worked in computer forensics since 1998. He has published a book and numerous articles on the subject. He has a Ph.D. in criminal justice and has taught courses at Michigan State University, California State University Sacramento, and the University of North Texas. In spite of that, he has something that may be interesting to hear.

John Maushammer aka Morcheeba is the person who reverse engineered and then hacked three disposable digital cameras to make them reusable. He also reversed engineered the Sega VMU mini game system. Detailed info can be found at http://www.maushammer.com/systems.

Anthony Mazza received his BAS in sociology from Temple University in 2000. He began with the Prometheus Radio Project as a volunteer in the fall of 2002, joining the staff in 2003 as administration director. Since then, his primary responsibility has been to ensure a sustainable future for the organization. This includes working with the board of directors to establish both short term and long term development and fundraising goals, as well as organizing day-to-day administrative tasks, among other things. In addition, he is a leading organizer in the Philadelphia Independent Media Center and Radio Volta, a community-based Internet radio station in Philadelphia.

Julien McArdle ("Seal") is a student at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He enjoys writing security articles for which he has been published in 2600 and Slashdotted. He has made two films: one on computer essentials for newbies (The EYNTO Show) and a documentary that takes a detailed look at music/movie piracy (http://piracydocumentary.com).

mc.fly was born in Germany and joined the CCC in the late 90s. He now studies computer science at the Technical University in Darmstadt and is part of the CCC in Darmstadt. mc.fly works with C-RaDaR to produce "hacker scene radio."

Kevin Mitnick was our keynote speaker back in 2004. Since then he's been giving talks all around the planet and appearing on television every time something involving the Internet is in the news. Quite a change from a decade ago when he was locked in prison with no prospects of getting out anytime soon. Kevin's ability to understand and use technology seems to either scare people or enlighten them. Fortunately he seems to be getting through to more of them than ever before which hopefully will help prevent someone else from being put through the hell he endured.

Reginald "Reggie" Montgomery is a legend among investigative professionals. He specializes in corporate asset protection and criminal defense investigations. He has given hundreds of speeches to national and international associations on a number of investigative subjects ranging from product diversion and protecting intellectual property to workplace violence investigations. Reggie is best known for his interview and polygraph workshops. Following retirement from local law enforcement in 1979, he became a New Jersey licensed private investigator and is currently president of R.J. Montgomery Associates in Saddle River, New Jersey. He served as president of the New Jersey Licensed Private Investigators Association from June 1996 to June 2000 and has been named to the Certification Board of the United States Association of Professional Investigators. Reggie is an adjunct professor at New Jersey City University.

Alexander Muentz is a geek for Cornerstone IT. He's been a sysadmin and network engineer in corporate IT for several years before graduating from Temple Law School in 2006. He's worked with the New Jersey Public Defender and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, helping draft their network privacy policy. He's spoken at Pumpcon 2005 and lives in Philadelphia.

Mike Murray is nCircle's director of vulnerability and exposure research, working out of the company's Canadian headquarters in Toronto. In this role, he oversees the Canadian operations for the company and leads the nCircle VnE research team in both Canada and the U.S. Having joined the company in 2000, Mike previously held several positions within nCircle including acting as the manager of the vulnerability research team and overseeing the company's internal IT and security programs. As manager of the vulnerability research team, Mike played a key role in creating new methods of vulnerability detection, positioning nCircle as an industry leader in the science of detecting known vulnerabilities in end hosts. He has published several articles in publications such as SysAdmin and CISSPWorld and has spoken at industry forums such as Central Maryland Information Systems and Audit Control Association. He has also held positions with FSC Internet Corporation (where he performed security assessments and vulnerability research) and LURHQ Corp (as product manager and the head of the LURHQ Threat Intelligence Group). Mike is a certified information systems security professional and holds a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Toronto.

Annalee Newitz is currently a writer/columnist for Wired magazine, Popular Science, New Scientist, and alternet.org. She was a former policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Her stuff can be seen at http://www.techsploitation.com.

Sam Nitzberg (sam@iamsam.com) is a computer security analyst who has presented and published on subjects relating to information security, information warfare, and technology and society. His papers and presentations have been conducted in both national and international venues and he has attended or participated in each of the HOPE conferences since their inception. His website is http://www.iamsam.com.

Karsten Nohl is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of Virginia. His research interests include computer security and privacy with a focus on RFID tags. His past work includes safety-critical embedded systems and next-generation overlay networks.

Kevin Noppinger serves as lab director for DNA Labs International. His real world law enforcement experience and his encyclopedic knowledge of DNA related topics make him the perfect lecturer on the use of DNA as an investigative tool. Kevin has over 25 years in forensic serology and DNA science as both a testifying DNA analyst and laboratory technical leader, and has had extensive courtroom experience as an expert witness in circuit, federal, and international courts. He consults for the National Forensic Science Training Center (NFSTC) and conducts DNA audits in labs throughout the United States as required to become and maintain accreditation as established by the FBI. Kevin is currently the only DNA scientist conducting casework in the state of Florida and one of only 45 scientists worldwide who are certified by the American Board of Criminalistics (ABC) as a fellow in molecular biology.

Miles Nordin is a grizzled Unix sysadmin. He started by shutting down his FidoNet BBS and installing Linux 0.99.14, then found he preferred gopher to the WWW because he thought the gopher client was prettier than the early Zork-style CERN web browser. Currently he's more worried about pushing the packets/s performance of his cheap Unix routers, getting HFSC QoS to work, and writing programs in some respectable language other than C.

Oddsman is a grumpy old cypherpunk who distrusts all governments. He'd like 2600 to consider adding different payment options. He'd prefer a payment system option which actually treats its users like they're adults. He does not speak for e-gold in any way, but he likes the stuff a lot.

Adam J. O'Donnell aka Javaman is a senior research scientist fighting the good fight against spammers at Cloudmark, Inc. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering as an NSF graduate research fellow from Drexel University in 2005. Adam has worked on several technical articles and books, serving as a contributing author to Building Open Source Network Security Tools and Hacker's Challenge, and coauthor of Hacker's Challenge 2. He is a member of the IEEE, ACM, Usenix, and the Cult of the Dead Cow.

Sam Pocker is the host of YMMV Radio, a weekly radio program about saving money on just about anything. YMMV Radio was born of a need to take a step back and look at what things cost - evaluating why people no longer blink at the price of two dollars for a cup of coffee or a dollar for a pack of gum. Sam and the cast of the program spend their time figuring out loopholes, alternate suppliers, and simply cheaper ways to get the same things.

Porkchop (porkchop@2600.com) is half the impetus behind the New York Computer Community Connection Project (NYCCCP). A network manager by day, his other credits include editing Freedom Downtime and managing the 18th floor during this conference.

James Powderly has a master's degree from NYU's Interactive Telecommunication Program. He worked at Honeybee Robotics as the director of technology development and has been an engineer since 2002. At Honeybee, James was part of a team that developed technology for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover that is currently operating on the surface of the red planet and designed a robotic installation for the architects Diller and Scofidio that was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His is the cofounder of Robot Clothes and his work can be found at http://robotclothes.com.

QuiGon (CISSP-ISSAP, NSA-IAM) resides in Jacksonville, Florida and is currently providing system administration services to an advertising, PR, and marketing firm. He has 14 years of experience in electronics, system administration, networking, and system security. QuiGon is best known for his work with the North American IPv6 Task Force, the IPv6 Forum, and FairuzaWRT which is Linksys WRT54GS firmware designed for "drive by upload" attack support. He has spoken on IPv6 and other topics at several venues, including DefCon, PhreakNIC, ToorCon, and ShmooCon. QuiGon is also a senior member of the Hacker Pimps, a security think tank with several members from all over the U.S. When not totally absorbed by system security related issues, QuiGon can be found tinkering on his home IT lab, actively participating as vice president of the Jacksonville Linux User's Group, and trying to find speakers for the Jacksonville 2600 chapter.

Steven Rambam is the founder and CEO of Pallorium, Inc. (http://www.pallorium.com), a licensed investigative agency with offices and affiliates worldwide, including Texas, Louisiana, California, and New York. Since 1980, Pallorium's investigators have successfully closed more than 8000 cases, ranging from homicide investigations to missing persons cases to the investigation of various types of sophisticated financial and insurance frauds. Steven was one of the first investigators to expose "prime bank note" and "trading program" frauds, and his investigations in conjunction with U.S. federal law enforcement agencies resulted in some of the first convictions and imprisonment of PBN fraudsters. He is perhaps best publicly known for his pro bono activities, which have included the investigation of nearly 200 Nazi collaborators and war criminals in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia. Steven has also coordinated efforts to expose terrorist groups' fundraising activities in the United States and has conducted investigations which resulted in the tightening of airport security in eight U.S. cities.

RedHackt has been involved with 2600 since 2002 as a regular Off The Hook guest and world traveler. Currently a student in New York, he aspires to be an officer in the Finnish Army. He enjoys whiteboards, coffee, and burning the candle at both ends. He often finds himself wondering where he is and how he got there.

Paul Renda started his career working on the IBM 360 and the PDP-11. He was an early advocate of using hacking software to check corporate data systems and has presented talks at the Computer Security Institute. Paul's articles have appeared in the Info Security magazine. He is currently a computer security analyst.

RenderMan has been a fixture in the wardriving community for many years. He never seems to be out of crazy projects and ideas, and never very far from wardriving news, often causing it himself. He also coauthored RFID Security for Syngress Publishing. He spends his time working on things like the "stumbler ethic," Worldwide WarDrive, "the warpack," and the Church of WiFi. When not working to make wardriving an acceptable hobby, he can usually be found taking something apart, creating an army of cybernetic fluffins, trying to win the DefCon wardriving contest, or more likely, at the hotel bar.

Kelly Riddle is one of the premier experts on surveillance and investigative "field craft" and he has trained hundreds of investigative professionals. He has more than 23 years of uninterrupted investigative experience and earned a bachelor of science degree in criminal justice from the University of North Alabama. Kelly was chosen as the "P.I. of the Year" by the National Association of Investigative Specialists and PI Magazine named him as the "Number One P.I. in the United States." He has been designated an expert in surveillance, insurance investigations, nursing home abuse, and computer investigations. Kelly is the founder and president of the P.I. Institute of Education as well as the Association of Christian Investigators with more than 400 members in 43 states and six countries. He is a member of NAIS, GIN, TALI, LAPI, FAPI, ASIS, and ACI.

Frank Rieger has been an activist in the fields of privacy and cyber rights with Germany's Chaos Computer Club for more then a decade now. Professionally, he is the CTO of GSMK, the company that builds the CryptoPhone, the world's first and only published source code voice encryption system. He lives and works in Berlin.

Evan Roth is a recent MFA graduate from and professor in the design technology department at Parsons. He is the creator of Graffiti Analysis, a project that uses motion tracking, computer vision technology, and a custom C++ application to record and analyze a graffiti writer's pen movement over time. Evan's media experiments also include Explicit Content Only, Postal Labels Against Bush, and Graffiti Taxonomy. All these projects are featured at http://www.ni9e.com.

Mark S. aka Skram is a 15-year-old open source enthusiast. Engaging in Linux and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) on a daily basis, he aspires to turn these hobbies into a lifelong career. As an administrator for Telephreak(.org), Mark frequently participates in #telephreak as well as their voice conferences. Originally from the "Big Apple," Mark currently resides in Austin, Texas. In his limited spare time, he enjoys traveling throughout the country meeting an array of diverse people and experiencing new and exciting cultures and attractions.

Hannah Sassaman is a rabble-rouser at the Prometheus Radio Project. She was a key organizer of major FCC localism hearings in San Antonio and Rapid City. She recently helped coordinate the successful building of an FCC licensed emergency radio station used by families displaced by Hurricane Katrina in Houston. Hannah regularly facilitates workshops, radio plays, and movement building discussions at Prometheus' radio barnraisings. Hannah has been featured in segments on NPR's On the Media, Democracy Now!, CNN, C-Span, and a variety of other television, radio, and print projects. She will spend much of this year on the road leading workshops on community wireless projects. Fresh to Prometheus from the Philadelphia IMC and the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, Hannah is banned from all official National Association of Broadcasters events.

Jason Scott is the administrator and founder of textfiles.com, a collection of historical computer artifacts spanning the last 40 years, with a focus on the era of the dial-up bulletin board system (BBS). He recently finished a three DVD documentary called BBS: The Documentary (http://bbsdocumentary.com) and is currently filming a documentary about text adventures (http://getlamp.com).

Micah Sherr is a Ph.D. candidate in computer and information sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include network security, protocol design and analysis, network intrusion detection and prevention, and privacy and data confidentiality.

M. Smart is a former operative for CONTROL, a secret U.S. government spy agency.

Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU Project, launched in 1984 to develop the free software operating system GNU. The name "GNU" is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix." He graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a BA in physics. During his college years he also worked as a staff hacker at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, learning operating system development by doing it. He wrote the first extensible Emacs text editor there in 1975. He also developed the AI technique of dependency-directed backtracking, also known as truth maintenance. In January 1984 he resigned from MIT to start the GNU project.

StankDawg is a senior programmer/analyst who has worked for Fortune 500 companies and large universities. He is the founder of hacker zine BinRev as well as a staff writer for 2600 and numerous websites. He has given presentations at HOPE, DefCon, Interz0ne, and other local venues and has also appeared on numerous television shows. He is founder of the Digital Dawg Pound (DDP) which is a group of white-hat/gray-hat hackers who produce their own magazine, radio shows, TV shows, and numerous other projects at binrev.com.

Robert Steele, recovering spy and emerging candidate for President (or at least Karl Rove's job of President's Brain), is the son of an oilman who has spent most of his life overseas listening to why people hate America. A former Marine Corps infantry officer and then intelligence officer, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer unusual for having served in three of the four directorates after three back to back clandestine tours overseas (one focused on terrorism), and the founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command, Robert has spent the last 18 years poking a stick in the eye of secret intelligence with what he calls open source intelligence (OSINT): faster, better, cheaper intelligence from legally and ethically available information in 185 languages that CIA does not comprehend. He is the Number One Amazon reviewer for nonfiction and the founder of the Citizens' Party, a non-rival party committed to electoral reform.

Paul Suda has been an independent consultant in the Chicago area for over five years. He has specialized in bringing open source based software solutions to nonprofit organizations. These have included large scale MapServer installations, custom PHP/MySQL database applications, and enterprise level Linux server deployment. For fun lately he's been doing volunteer website work for the Chicago cycling community, which has been a great excuse to learn about Google Maps and create some cool tools.

Sysmin resides in Florida where he works as a senior security consultant for a large consulting firm. He has been working in the area of information security and technology for over ten years. He is also a security researcher and founder of the security research think tank The Hacker Pimps. He is a regular public speaker and has spoken at numerous security events including: DefCon, ShmooCon, ToorCon, PhreakNIC, and Interz0ne just to name a few. Sysmin conducts research in many areas including the IPv6 protocol and is also a member of the North American IPv6 Task Force. He holds many high level certifications from organizations such as the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, National Security Agency, Check Point, and EC Council among others. He holds a bachelor of science in information technology and is currently finishing up his master of science in information technology with a specialization in information security.

syzygy lives in Queens and loves eating chicken and collard greens. As if that weren't enough, he has also done research in diverse fields of physics including experimental condensed matter physics, computational biophysics, and string theory. He's got a master's degree in physics and is currently blowing off completing his doctorate. You may hear him on Off The Hook.

J. Salvatore Testa II is a member of Hacktivismo, a human rights and technology group that fulfills a critical component of the Cult of the Dead Cow triumvirate. He is a computer security consultant and a graduate student studying computer security and information assurance at the Rochester Institute of Technology. It is rumored that J. Salvatore once hacked Chuck Norris' computer.

Frank ("Thorn") Thornton runs his own technology consulting firm, Blackthorn Systems, which specializes in wireless networks and security. An interest in amateur radio has also helped him bridge the gap between computers and wireless networks. Thorn's experience with computers goes back to the 1970s when he started programming mainframes. Over the last 30 years he has used dozens of different operating systems and programming languages. In addition to his computer and wireless interests, Thorn was a law enforcement officer for many years. As a detective and forensics expert he has investigated approximately 100 homicides and thousands of other crime scenes. Combining both professional interests, he was a member of the work group that established ANSI Standard ANSI/NIST-CSL 1-1993 "Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint Information." Thorn is a coauthor of WarDriving: Drive, Detect, Defend; Game Console Hacking; RFID Security and contributor to IT Ethics, all by Syngress Publishing. He resides in Vermont.

Marc Weber Tobias is an investigative attorney and physical security specialist in the United States. He has written five law enforcement textbooks dealing with criminal law, security, and communications. Marc was employed for several years by the Office of the Attorney General in South Dakota as the chief of the organized crime unit. He has lectured throughout the world to law enforcement agencies and consulted with clients and lock manufacturers in many countries. His law firm handles internal affairs investigations for certain government agencies, as well as civil investigations for private clients. He is also employed by both private and public clients to analyze high security locks and security systems for bypass capability and has been involved in the design of security hardware to prevent bypass. Through www.security.org, Marc has issued many security alerts regarding product defects in security hardware. He authored Locks, Safes, and Security, the primary reference for law enforcement agencies throughout the world and the companion LSS+, the multimedia edition.

Phillip Torrone (fill@2600.com) is senior editor of O'Reilly's MAKE magazine. He has authored and contributed to numerous books on programming, mobile devices, design, multimedia, consumer electronics, and hardware hacking. He is also a contributing editor for Popular Science. Prior to MAKE, Phillip was director of product development for creative firm Fallon Worldwide, founded HackaDay.com, and in the late 1990s helped lead the "Free Kevin" efforts with FreeKevin.com and 2600.

TProphet aka The Telecom Informer, is a longtime staff writer and columnist for 2600 magazine. He is interested in a wide range of communications technologies, particularly mobile phones. TProphet's research is reportedly also popular with the security departments of telecommunications carriers. Beyond his zest for taking things apart, TProphet enjoys electronic music and visiting unusual places. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Russell Trafford-Jones studied physics at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, where he spent a lot of time working at the student radio station as an engineer. There they started broadcasting on AM and on DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting). He worked for NPR in the U.S. for a short time and for a commercial network in the U.K., GWR (now GCap Media), who were early adopters of DAB and helped to push it forward. He then became a broadcast engineer at the BBC at Television Center in London where he now works.

Pete Tridish was a member of the founding collective of Radio Mutiny, 91.3 FM in Philadelphia. He is also a founder of the Prometheus Radio Project. In 1997, he was an organizer for Radio Mutiny's demonstrations at Benjamin Franklin's printing press and the Liberty Bell. On both occasions the station broadcast in open defiance of the FCC's rules that prohibit low power community broadcasting.. He also worked on the first two micro-radio conferences on the East Coast and organized radio barnraisings in eight communities around the United States. He actively participated in the rulemaking that led to the adoption of LPFM. He sat on the committee that sponsored the crucial Broadcast Signal Labs study, which proved to the FCC that LPFM would not cause interference. Pete has helped to build a number of low power radio stations and provided advice to hundreds. He has done radio trainings in Guatemala, Venezuela, Nepal, Tanzania, and other countries. He has also spoken at colleges, coffee shops, living rooms, and even the CATO Institute. Pete has been interviewed in numerous media outlets all throughout the world. He and Kate Coyer contributed an article to the recent book News Incorporated. He holds a BA in appropriate technology from Antioch College.

Brandon Uttech (brandon.uttech@gmail.com), a penetration tester and professional programmer, is resident ninja of his group. His previous work includes wireless security assessments, helping to put on the annual Capture the Flag hacking competition at DefCon, and providing well-timed advice on physical security. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys taiko drumming and swordfighting in the rain.

Peter Wayner is the author of Translucent Databases, a book that explores how to build databases that do useful work without having useful information in them. He writes frequently for many publications and consults on database design and other security questions.

Barry Wels earned his nickname "The Key" when he started picking locks around 1985. As cofounder of the infamous hacker magazine Hack-Tic, he had a logical place to publish articles on lockpicking in the early 1990s. His first presentations and workshops took place at the HEU (Hacking at the End of the Universe) conference and in Bielefeld at the "public domain" sessions (both in 1993). Many presentations followed, including the HOPE conferences (H2K, H2K2, and The Fifth HOPE). Some of these presentations can be downloaded for free at: http://connect.waag.org/toool/. Barry is one of the founders and president of Toool, a lockpick sportgroup in the Netherlands. Toool stands for The Open Organization Of Lockpickers. Just like their German friends in SSdev.org they pick locks as an official sport, complete with championships. Besides picking locks Toool members also study locks, sometimes finding huge and previously unpublished flaws. Needless to say, the lock industry is not always too happy. Lately, some smarter lock companies have started asking Toool what they think of a lock before commencing mass production. Even though some offers were made to get him to work for the lock/security industry, Barry still works at CryptoPhone. As one of the cofounders of CryptoPhone, he thinks it is important to fight the battle for publicly accessible secure mobile communications. CryptoPhone is the first and only secure cellular, landline, and satellite phone company that publishes the complete source code to its products. This allows the cryptographic/academic community (and the public at large) to look for flaws or backdoors in the product. Just as with mechanical locks, Barry believes in security through transparency, not through obscurity.

Jonathan Westhues has built a number of devices involving digital signal processing and RFID. He has experience in fields relating to software, communications, and radio electronics.

Paul Wouters has been involved with Linux networking and security since he cofounded the Dutch ISP Xtended Internet back in 1996, where he started working with FreeS/WAN IPsec in 1999 and with DNSSEC for the .nl domain in 2001. He has presented papers at BlackHat, SANS, DefCon, CCC, and many other conferences around the world. He designed and deployed the then largest outdoor WiFi deployment at HAL in The Netherlands in 2001. Paul cofounded Xelerance in 2003, focusing on IPsec, DNSSEC, Radius, as well as delivering trainings. He published his first book this year on running IPsec on Linux and Windows/OSX entitled Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks with Openswan. In his spare time, Paul maintains various Fedora Extras packages and the Windows port of the Off-the-Record plugin for Windows.

Chris Barylick (http://www.dcstandup.com/chrisbarylick.shtml) is the founder of the Geek Comedy Tour 3000 and a nerd at heart. He uses an energetic mix of pop culture, everyday humor, and tech/nerd triviata to make fun of the things closest to him. Chris has performed at various venues throughout DC and on Sirius Satellite Radio.

Armed with a confident, experienced comedic style, Ryan Conner (http://www.ryanconnercomedy.com) has become an outstanding talent in the DC comedy scene. He is a regular on XM Radio and has worked with Dave Chappelle, Colin Quinn, Mitch Hedberg, and more.

Hailing from Buffalo, Erin Conroy (http://www.dcstandup.com/erinconroy.shtml) has been making audiences laugh with her twisted delivery and relatable stories for almost three years. She has won numerous competitions, appeared on a CD of some of DC's best comedy, and once she matched three out of five winning Powerball numbers. Also, she was the captain of the varsity badminton team in high school. Seriously.

A Washington DC native, Joe Deeley has been a comedian and comic actor for over 20 years and performed as a regular cast member of the cable television show Comedy Sickness. Joe's comedy has been described as an enigma within a conundrum wrapped in a riddle, roasted over hickory coals, smothered with Monterey Jack Cheese, and served with a side of coleslaw.

Frank Hong (http://www.dcstandup.com/frankhong.shtml) has performed at major comedy clubs and colleges everywhere. His witty, clean, dry sense of humor is suitable for everyone regardless of their age, gender, race, religion, birthplace, sexual history, criminal record, ability to lasso cattle, and whether or not they are a fan of the most underrated celebrity of all-time: Kevin Sorbo.

Originally from Chicago, James Jones now resides in the DC metro area. His clipped, deadpan delivery, and wide-eyed observations have made him a favorite of geeks and jocks alike.

Jimmy Meritt (http://www.jimmymeritt.com), as well as being one of the funniest touring comics on the East Coast, also camped out in front of the Uptown Theater in Washington DC for 11 days to see Star Wars: Episode 3. He was dressed as Grand Moff Tarkin.

In a short time, high-energy comic Danny Rouhier (http://www.funnydanny.com) has experienced a meteoric rise through the comedy ranks. He's been featured in both the DC and Boston Comedy Festivals, dozens of clubs and colleges, and was recently accepted into NACA for college bookings.

Rory Scovel (http://www.roryscovel.com) is to comedy what Thierry Henry is to Arsenal... black. He's from South Carolina and now lives in DC.

Justin Schlegel (http://www.justinschlegel.com) sprinkles methamphetamines on his cereal to help him relax. He is a level 60 paladin in Final Fantasy XI with full artifact gear.

Perhaps one of the most seasoned comics in the DC comedy scene, Paul Schorsch brings six years of experience as well as an extensive knowledge of Star Trek trivia to the table. He is currently working on a robot which will defeat Matthew Perry in mortal combat.

Evan Valentine is the winner of the Loyola Last Comic Standing competition and not to be mistaken for the Jolly Pale Giant nor Shaggy from Scooby Doo.