Gordon Lyon (also known by his pseudonym Fyodor Vaskovich) is an American

network security Network security consists of the policies, processes and practices adopted to prevent, detect and monitor unauthorized access, misuse, modification, or denial of a computer network and network-accessible resources. Network security involves th ...

expert, creator of

Nmap Nmap (Network Mapper) is a network scanner created by Gordon Lyon (also known by his pseudonym ''Fyodor Vaskovich''). Nmap is used to discover hosts and services on a computer network by sending packets and analyzing the responses. Nmap prov ...

and writer of books, websites, and technical papers about network security. He is a founding member of the Honeynet Project and was Vice President of

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) was a global organization promoting the responsible use of computer technology. CPSR was incorporated in 1983 following discussions and organizing that began in 1981. It educated policymakers ...

Personal life

Lyon has been active in the network security community since the mid-1990s. His handle, "Fyodor", was taken from Russian author

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (, ; rus, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский, Fyódor Mikháylovich Dostoyévskiy, p=ˈfʲɵdər mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ dəstɐˈjefskʲɪj, a=ru-Dostoevsky.ogg, links=yes; 11 November 18219 ...

. Most of his programming is done in the C, C++, and

Perl Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...

programming languages.

Opposition to grayware

In December 2011, Lyon published his strong dislike of the way

Download.com CNET Download (originally Download.com) is an Internet download directory website launched in 1996 as a part of CNET. Initially it resided on the domain ''download.com'', and then ''download.com.com'' for a while, and is now ''download.cnet.com' ...

started bundling

grayware Greyware may refer to: * Grey ware, a type of pottery made of a grey paste * Grayware, unwanted applications or files that are not classified as malware, but can worsen the performance of computers and cause security risks * Greyware Automation P ...

with their installation managers and concerns over the bundled software, causing many people to spread the post on social networks, and a few dozen media reports. The main problem is the confusion between Download.com-offered content and software offered by original authors; the accusations included deception as well as copyright and trademark violation. Lyon lost control of the

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrori ...

page in 2015, with Sourceforge taking over the project's page and offering

adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...

wrapped download bundles. The original SourceForge page no longer contains any files and the Sourceforge "mirror" page used to hijack the Nmap account redirects to the official https://nmap.org/.

Websites

Lyon maintains several network security web sites: * Nmap.Org – Host of the

security scanner and its documentation * SecTools.Org – The top 100 network security tools (ranked by thousands of Nmap users) * SecLists.Org – Archive of the most common security mailing lists * Insecure.Org – His main site, offering security news/updates, exploit world archive, and other misc. security resources

Published books

Lyon has written and co-authored several books: * ''Know Your Enemy: Revealing the Security Tools, Tactics, and Motives of the Blackhat Community'', co-authored with other members of the Honeynet Project. A 2nd edition is now available, as ar
sample chapters
* ''Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent''. Hacker fiction, but tries to stay realistic. Co-authored with

Kevin Mitnick Kevin David Mitnick (born August 6, 1963) is an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crim ...

and other hackers. Gordon's chapter i
freely available online
* ''Nmap Network Scanning''

Interviews

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

Conferences

Lyon attends and speaks at many security conferences. He has presented at

DEFCON The defense readiness condition (DEFCON) is an alert state used by the United States Armed Forces. (DEFCON is not mentioned in the 2010 and newer document) The DEFCON system was developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and unified and spec ...

, CanSecWest,

FOSDEM Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and ...

, IT Security World, Security Masters' Dojo,

ShmooCon ShmooCon is an American hacker convention organized by The Shmoo Group. There are typically 40 different talks and presentations on a variety of subjects related to computer security and cyberculture. Multiple events are held at the convention r ...

, IT-Defense, SFOBug, and others.

References

External links

Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lyon, Gordon Living people Writers about computer security American computer programmers Free software programmers American technology writers Writers from California 1977 births