Gordon Lyon

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Gordon Lyon
Fyodor Hope6 Appelbaum 1100x1100.jpg
#Nmap
Born1977 (age 4647)
Other namesFyodor Vaskovich
Known for Nmap
Website insecure.org/fyodor

Gordon Lyon (also known by his pseudonym Fyodor Vaskovich [1] ) is an American network security expert, [2] creator of Nmap and author 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.

Contents

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. [3] Most of his programming is done in the C, C++, and Perl programming languages.

Opposition to grayware

In December 2011, Lyon published a post criticizing the fact that Download.com started bundling grayware with their installation managers and expressing concerns users confusing Download.com-offered content for software offered by original authors; his accusations included deception as well as copyright and trademark violation. [4] [5]

Conferences

Lyon has presented at DEFCON, CanSecWest, FOSDEM, IT Security World, Security Masters' Dojo, ShmooCon, IT-Defense, SFOBug, and other security conferences. [6] [7]

Websites

Lyon maintains several network security web sites:

Published books

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honeypot (computing)</span> Computer security mechanism

In computer terminology, a honeypot is a computer security mechanism set to detect, deflect, or, in some manner, counteract attempts at unauthorized use of information systems. Generally, a honeypot consists of data that appears to be a legitimate part of the site which contains information or resources of value to attackers. It is actually isolated, monitored, and capable of blocking or analyzing the attackers. This is similar to police sting operations, colloquially known as "baiting" a suspect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nmap</span> Network scanner

Nmap is a network scanner created by Gordon Lyon. Nmap is used to discover hosts and services on a computer network by sending packets and analyzing the responses.

A port scanner is an application designed to probe a server or host for open ports. Such an application may be used by administrators to verify security policies of their networks and by attackers to identify network services running on a host and exploit vulnerabilities.

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 the authorization of access to data in a network, which is controlled by the network administrator. Users choose or are assigned an ID and password or other authenticating information that allows them access to information and programs within their authority. Network security covers a variety of computer networks, both public and private, that are used in everyday jobs: conducting transactions and communications among businesses, government agencies and individuals. Networks can be private, such as within a company, and others which might be open to public access. Network security is involved in organizations, enterprises, and other types of institutions. It does as its title explains: it secures the network, as well as protecting and overseeing operations being done. The most common and simple way of protecting a network resource is by assigning it a unique name and a corresponding password.

hping is an open-source packet generator and analyzer for the TCP/IP protocol created by Salvatore Sanfilippo . It is one of the common tools used for security auditing and testing of firewalls and networks, and was used to exploit the idle scan scanning technique, and now implemented in the Nmap Security Scanner. The new version of hping, hping3, is scriptable using the Tcl language and implements an engine for string based, human-readable description of TCP/IP packets so that the programmer can write scripts related to low level TCP/IP packet manipulation and analysis in a short time.

CNET Download 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. The domain download.com attracted at least 113 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.

Black Hat Briefings is a computer security conference that provides security consulting, training, and briefings to hackers, corporations, and government agencies around the world. Black Hat brings together a variety of people interested in information security ranging from non-technical individuals, executives, hackers, and security professionals. The conference takes place regularly in Las Vegas, Barcelona, London and Riyadh. The conference has also been hosted in Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. in the past.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metasploit</span> Computer security testing tool

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On computer networks, a service scan identifies the available network services by attempting to initiate many sessions to different applications with each device in a target group of devices. This is done by sending session initiation packets for many different applications to open ports on all of the devices specified in the target group of devices. This scan is done across a wide range of TCP, UDP. A service scanner will identify each device it finds along with the services that it finds on the ports that it scans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Idle scan</span>

An idle scan is a TCP port scan method for determining what services are open on a target computer without leaving traces pointing back at oneself. This is accomplished by using packet spoofing to impersonate another computer so that the target believes it's being accessed by the zombie. The target will respond in different ways depending on whether the port is open, which can in turn be detected by querying the zombie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Babylon (software)</span> Computer dictionary and translation program

Babylon is a computer dictionary and translation program developed by the Israeli company Babylon Software Ltd. based in the city of Or Yehuda. The company was established in 1997 by the Israeli entrepreneur Amnon Ovadia. Its IPO took place ten years later. It is considered a part of Israel's Download Valley, a cluster of software companies monetizing "free" software downloads through adware. Babylon includes in-house proprietary dictionaries, as well as community-created dictionaries and glossaries. It is a tool used for translation and conversion of currencies, measurements and time, and for obtaining other contextual information. The program also uses a text-to-speech agent, so users hear the proper pronunciation of words and text. Babylon has developed 36 English-based proprietary dictionaries in 21 languages. In 2008–2009, Babylon reported earnings of 50 million NIS through its collaboration with Google.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Kaminsky</span> American computer security researcher (1979–2021)

Daniel Kaminsky was an American computer security researcher. He was a co-founder and chief scientist of Human Security, a computer security company. He previously worked for Cisco, Avaya, and IOActive, where he was the director of penetration testing. The New York Times labeled Kaminsky an "Internet security savior" and "a digital Paul Revere".

Network enumeration is a computing activity in which usernames and info on groups, shares, and services of networked computers are retrieved. It should not be confused with network mapping, which only retrieves information about which servers are connected to a specific network and what operating system runs on them. Network enumeration is the discovery of hosts or devices on a network. Network enumeration tends to use overt discovery protocols such as ICMP and SNMP to gather information. It may also scan various ports on remote hosts for looking for well known services in an attempt to further identify the function of a remote host. The next stage of enumeration is to fingerprint the operating system of the remote host.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kali Linux</span> Debian-based Linux distribution for penetration testing

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matt Suiche</span>

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A potentially unwanted program (PUP) or potentially unwanted application (PUA) is software that a user may perceive as unwanted or unnecessary. It is used as a subjective tagging criterion by security and parental control products. Such software may use an implementation that can compromise privacy or weaken the computer's security. Companies often bundle a wanted program download with a wrapper application and may offer to install an unwanted application, and in some cases without providing a clear opt-out method. Antivirus companies define the software bundled as potentially unwanted programs which can include software that displays intrusive advertising (adware), or tracks the user's Internet usage to sell information to advertisers (spyware), injects its own advertising into web pages that a user looks at, or uses premium SMS services to rack up charges for the user. A growing number of open-source software projects have expressed dismay at third-party websites wrapping their downloads with unwanted bundles, without the project's knowledge or consent. Nearly every third-party free download site bundles their downloads with potentially unwanted software. The practice is widely considered unethical because it violates the security interests of users without their informed consent. Some unwanted software bundles install a root certificate on a user's device, which allows hackers to intercept private data such as banking details, without a browser giving security warnings. The United States Department of Homeland Security has advised removing an insecure root certificate, because they make computers vulnerable to serious cyberattacks. Software developers and security experts recommend that people always download the latest version from the official project website, or a trusted package manager or app store.

References

  1. "! S a f e m o d e . o r g !". May 15, 2019. Archived from the original on May 15, 2019. Retrieved November 24, 2021.
  2. Leyden, John (October 5, 2012). "Experts troll 'biggest security mag in the world' with DICKish submission". The Register . Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  3. "About me" . Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  4. Krebs, Brian (December 6, 2011). "Download.com Bundling Toolbars, Trojans?". Krebs on Security. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  5. Lyon, Gordon (June 27, 2012). "Download.com Caught Adding Malware to Nmap & Other Software" . Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  6. "Fyodor's Nmap Presentations" . Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  7. DEFCONConference (February 7, 2014). "DEF CON 13 - Fyodor, Hacking Nmap". YouTube. Archived from the original on December 13, 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  8. The Honeypot Project (2002). Know Your Enemy: Revealing the Security Tools, Tactics, and Motives of the Blackhat Community. Addison-Wesley. ISBN   0-201-74613-1.
  9. 1131ah; Rogers, Russ; Beale, Jay; Grand, Joe; Fyodor; FX; Craig, Paul; Mullen, Timothy; Parker, Tom (2004). Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent. Syngress. ISBN   1-931836-05-1.
  10. Lyon, Gordon (2008). Nmap Network Scanning. Nmap Project. ISBN   978-0-9799587-1-7.