Gordon Lyon


Gordon Lyon is an American network security expert, 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].

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. 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; he accused them of using deception as well as copyright and trademark violation.

Conferences

Lyon has presented at DEF [CON (convention)|DEFCON], CanSecWest, FOSDEM, IT Security World, Security Masters' Dojo, ShmooCon, IT-Defense, SFOBug, and other security conferences.

Websites

Lyon maintains several network security web sites:
  • Nmap.Org - Host of the Nmap security scanner and its documentation
  • SecTools.Org - The top 100 network security tools
  • 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

  • Know Your Enemy: Revealing the Security Tools, Tactics, and Motives of the Blackhat Community, co-authored with other members of the Honeynet Project.
  • Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent, co-authored with Kevin Mitnick and other hackers.
  • ''Nmap Network Scanning''