It seemed that almost every day last year we heard of yet another new attack of security vulnerability in an operating system or popular application. Much of this news came by way of white hat hackers who found and explained how to prevent attacks. And eWeek explain who they think are the five most noteworthy hackers of last year in terms of discoveries and disclosures.
"In the security year that was 2006, zero-day attacks and exploits dominated the headlines. However, the year will be best remembered for the work of members of the hacking - er, security research - community who discovered and disclosed serious vulnerabilities in the technologies we take for granted, forced software vendors to react faster to flaw warnings and pushed the vulnerability research boat into new, uncharted waters."
Two cheers for vulnerability researchers! Without them, who knows how long it would take for some developers to patch and plug holes in their code.
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
