Chaordic Mind

Last year’s list was such a hit, I decided to do it again. This year I took into consideration nominations from comments on Facebook, Twitter and the blog. All those suggestions, as well as my own, took a trip  through the gravitron accelerator and here are the results!

There are so many freaking awesome people. I try not to repeat people from year to year, and even then there are so many options. Long time friends and people I’m yet to meet. There should probably be a top 100 list!

My opinions are obviously biased by my network, projects, and perspective.  I encourage you to make your own list as well.  As always, feel free to disagree or add your own using the comments.

10. Michelle Schafer, MC Petermann, Katherine Nellums (our PR/Marketing trio)

Who would care about information security if it wasn’t widely distributed? These three women are the trio that connect with people, engage the conversation and raise the level of intrigue around the spurious conversations we create.  I know when they are in town a posse of infosec people are close-by conversing about the next big thing.

09. Genevieve “Banasidhe” Southwick

When you think of security, don’t forget the physical side.  Banasidhe is part time bouncer, part time physical security / facilities manager, and former Vinyl Vanna.  She ran security for most every major Security B-Sides event, and is the bouncer you don’t want to cross paths with – unless you’re an invited VIP.

08. Leigh Honeywell

Leigh is co-founder of HackLab.TO, a hacker community space with many events on hardware hacking.  She’s a mainstay at most security conferences and many times on stage discussing malware, hardware hacking, or women in infosec.

07. Chris Nickerson

Chris is co-organizer of Security B-Sides, former cast of Tiger Team TV, and all around good guy.  He throws massive parties in Las Vegas (BSidesLV), flies around the world to present at conferences, and maintains the international-man-of-mystery persona.  His opinionated, straight-talk is often grounded in experience both on the digital and physical side of the house.

06. Alexander Sotirov

Sotirov is a founder and organizer of the Pwnie awards and was on the program committee of the 2008 Workshop On Offensive Technologies (WOOT ’08) as well as Hackito Ergo Sum 2011.  In his spare time he bypasses memory protection and creates rogue certificate authority certificates.

05. Bill Brenner

Bill has been covering the information security industry and documenting its past, present, and future for over [classified-redacted] years.  He knows and writes about those who need to be known, and covers stories ranging from the technical to the social, but always staying on or ahead of the next big thing.  His openness about himself is one of the many reasons people open up to him to share their stories.

04. Gordon “Fyodor” Lyon

Gordon is an infosec luminary having written NMAP, a tool that many claim is the reason they got into the industry in the first place.  He’s incredibly open and willing to talk to anyone. He is one of the few computer geeks who is sharply dressed at all times.  If you don’t know him you are missing out.

03. Allison Miller

Think you know fraud? Think again! Ally is a key player on the front lines of preventing fraud.  She presents on risk/fraud across several continents.  Her work includes detecting automated crime malware, running her own band, and mentoring others in their career and passions.

02. Jennifer Granick

Although she recently moved to another firm, her work for the EFF has protected the digital rights of hackers and citizens alike.  I can’t say enough about the work that her and others at the EFF have done to prevent the abuse of our legal rights.

01. Andrew Hay

As they say in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Vell, Andrew’s just zis guy, you know?”  The Zaphod Beeblebrox reincarnated, Andrew made “D” the new “A” when it comes to “A-Listers”.  He brings humor and levity to every event.  He co-organized BSidesOntario2010.  He probably even got 4chan to rig this contest so he topped the list.  He’s so good, we still can’t count the hanging chads.

After reading Violet Blue‘s list of the Top 10 Sexy Geeks I thought it only appropriate that we qualify that list and highlight some of the sexy infosec geeks.

It took ignoring large amounts of analytical data and bayesian analysis to bring you a list like this.  We leveraged many hours of questionably reputable consultants to mine the minds of infosec geeks around world.  The result is the following list of the Top 10 sexy infosec geeks of 2009.  (Feel free to disagree or add to the list via comments.)

10. Jeff Moss (Dark Tangent)

Founder of Black Hat and Defcon, Jeff has arguably brought together more information security geeks than anyone else. He was most recently appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council and enjoys a comfortable following in both the black/grey/white hat words. Jeff is certainly one of the more well known and certainly connected infosec geeks out there.

09. Justine Aitel

Justine is rumored to be one of the few many women in information security who writes shell code.  She is CEO of Immunity Inc, the creators of the CANVAS security testing tool.  What she carries in her pocketbook might just be the scariest device around.

08. Chris Wysopal (Weld Pond)

Former founder of the L0pht Heavy Industries and author of netcat and L0phtCrack, Chris is a veritable force when it comes to computer security and turning computer hackery into big business.  Chris is currently CTO of Veracode, a software security testing company.

07. Erin Jacobs

Erin has done more than create the controversial  secxy pillow fight at Defcon.  She started the first ever panel (that I know of) about professional image and gender issues in information security.  This brought together women from across the spectrum to raise the level of conversation and its awareness.  In addition she is a musician, motorcyclist, and daytime CSO.

06. Dino Dai Zovi

Dino is a hacker who literally wrote the book, The Mac Hackers Handbook.  In addition to that he won the very first pwn2own at CanSecWest in 2007, was named one of Violet Blue’s Top 10 Sexy Geeks in 2007, and named one of the 15 most influential people in security by eWeek in 2008.

05. Katie Moussouris

Katie knows all about the Security Development Lifecycle and has presented on it at numerous international security conferences.  In addition, she founded the Microsoft Vulnerability Research Program (MSRP) and the Symantec Vulnerability Research Program.  Katie is presently working with the ANSI standards body defining standards for the entire industry.

04. Christopher Hoff

Chris is known for his provocative statements such as Cloudifornication.  He is a sought after speaker on cloud computing and security and one of the few people in the industry who is both smart and a good entertainer. In addition to being sharp in mind he is tattooed tough while practicing Brazilian Jujitsu. He is currently Director of Cloud and Virtualization Systems at Cisco, but better known to friends as Father Cloud.

03. Stacy Thayer

Stacy is the only one in the bunch with a Ph.D.  She founded SOURCEBoston and quickly took it global with SOURCEBarcelona.  Stacy has been connected to the information security industry for some time and creating SOURCE conferences help bring together hundreds and thousands of individuals every year to collaborate and share their common interest.

02. Jacob Appelbaum

Jake can be complicated but certainly is directed towards hardware hacking, cryptography, extreme travel, languages, and photography.  He is currently executive director of the hackerspace Noisebridge in San Francisco.  He works for the Tor project but was formerly a sysadmin for Kink.com. You don’t get more sexy than that.

01. Jack Daniel

Jack is just this guy, ya know.  He looks as sexy as ZZ Top and probably hasn’t shaven his beard since before you were born, but that experience brings with it the tenacity to know true security from common theater. He seems to be everywhere at once and always willing to help people with his guidance, sarcasm, or even sock puppets.