Aman Abhishek is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research is about people organizing with communication and media technologies to fight for justice.
Nicole Adams is a new ham driven to bring the younger generation into the amateur radio hobby. Affectionately known as Mona Lisa Vito for her drag race hobby, Nicole's draw to ham radio was propagation and space weather.
Joshua Aaron has had decades in the music business as both a musician - in such notable bands as The Rosenbergs and Stealing Heather - and as a producer and engineer with AudioLot Studios. He has released multiple albums and toured the world. His music has been featured in numerous television shows and movies. Beyond music, Joshua has been heavily involved in the world of technology, heading up companies such as BootBox and ALL U Chart. Nowadays he spends his time coding apps to help people. His latest app is called ICEBlock, and is garnering massive attention nationwide.
Mitch Altman is an international hacker, inventor, entrepreneur, author, mentor, best known for starting Noisebridge hackerspace and inventing TV-B-Gone, which turns off TVs in public places. He did pioneering work in virtual reality in the mid 1980s and was co-founder of 3ware, a successful SillyValley startup in the 1990s. He has visited hundreds of hackerspaces around the world. He mentors, teaches soldering, and promotes open hardware and community wherever he goes.
Rambo Anderson-You has been doing offensive security for almost a decade now. He's OK at it, and has gotten by mostly on vibes and personality. He primarily does red teaming and enjoys walking everywhere.
Wesley Appler (aka lamemakes) is a professional software engineer and a recreational hardware engineer who is incredibly passionate about open source, human rights, and digital privacy. 
Christine Bachman leverages her background in teaching, graphics design, and technology in her current role as DevOps in education technology. She incorporated Lockpick Extreme LLC with her partner Bob Hermes to share the joy of lockpicking with others. An advocate for women in technology, they have brought lockpick villages to many nonprofit conferences over the last ten years.
Kevin Baragona is an experienced software and electrical hacker and has run an AI software company for the last seven years.
Daly Barnett is a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She performs security research for social justice and digital privacy trainings for human rights movements.
Scott Beibin is an inventor, self-taught engineer, science-artist, community builder, committed social/environmental activist, and enthusiast of open source liberation eco-technologies. He is driven by a thirst for knowledge and enthralled by multiple domains of rational thought and scientific exploration. He believes in making discovery and learning fun and accessible for all. Scott is a founder of Offworld Voyage and co-designer of the M.A.R.S. Tesseract space analog research habitats - created to simultaneously promote space exploration and protection for the environment on Earth in the face of climate biodevastation. He is an alumnus of the Mars Desert Research Station and a core committee member of JSAR (The Journal for Space Analog Research - a project of The Mars Society). His current umbrella of projects include Mandelbot Ecotech, Music on Mars, Groucho Fractal, AncientScan, Ptelepathetique and the Evil Twin Booking Agency. In the past he ran Lost Film Fest and the DIY punk/hardcore label Bloodlink Records.
Mattias Bergstrom is an AI researcher, software engineer, and decentralized systems architect, having designed AI-driven ranking systems, peer-to-peer knowledge networks, and decentralized incentive models to reimagine search beyond traditional web indexing. Mattias' work is centered on eliminating centralized gatekeeping in search, finance, and computing infrastructure.
Emma Best is an independent journalist and transparency advocate with a background in national security. In 2018, she co-founded Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets), a 501(c)(3) journalist nonprofit that has published major leaks from 60 countries. 
Elizabeth Biddlecome is a consultant and instructor, delivering technical training and mentorship to students and professionals. She leverages her enthusiasm for architecture, security, and code to design and implement comprehensive information security solutions for business needs. Elizabeth enjoys wielding everything from soldering irons to scripting languages in cybersecurity competitions, hackathons, and CTFs.
Mikalai Birukou is a software architect and privacy advocate focused on building decentralized, user-first digital ecosystems. He is a core developer of 3NWeb and chief technology officer at Ivy Cyber, where he leads the team developing the PrivacySafe Enterprise Suite. Mikalai has pioneered solutions that prioritize user sovereignty over corporate interests. His work in encrypted messaging, identity management, and federated storage aims to reshape how people interact with digital services, ensuring privacy, security, and autonomy in an increasingly surveilled world.
Patrick Boehler is founder of Gazzetta and leads a media research lab that studies how communities resist information control in autocratic settings. A former reporter, editor, and newsroom executive (The New York Times, South China Morning Post, Radio Free Europe), Patrick has spent the last decade exploring the interplay between technology, journalism, service, and resistance. He's especially interested in decentralized information networks, anti-censorship strategies, and how hacker ethos can transform journalism's future.
Steve Bossert is a lifelong wireless technology enthusiast who has worked with semiconductor, network infrastructure, content providers, and mobile operators globally since 2004 to help provide corporate strategy market research and go-to-market assistance. As an amateur radio operator (K2GOG) now for almost 25 years, Steve continues to converge hiking, drones, 3D printing, and space communications to be a more active part of modern STEM focused crossover topics relating to the future of amateur radio.
Sam Bowne has been teaching computer networking and security classes at City College San Francisco since 2000. He founded Infosec Decoded, Inc., and does corporate training and consulting for several Fortune 100 companies, on topics including incident response and secure coding.
Tom Brennan is a safety and security risk specialist who is involved with CREST, an international not-for-profit membership body representing the global cyber security industry. He is a U.S. Marine veteran and is currently the chief information officer of the national law firm Mandelbaum Barrett, where he oversees critical infrastructure, privacy, and security operations.
Jamie Brew is a writer based in Brooklyn. He is a contributor at The Onion, was the first head writer of ClickHole and created Botnik. He co-hosts Robot Karaoke, a live comedy show where participants sing all-new all-wrong words to karaoke songs. 
Dr. Earl Brown is a professor of pathology at East Tennessee State University's Quillen College of Medicine, where he has taught since 1987. He has received numerous awards for excellence and innovation in teaching, including recent honors for his work integrating technology into medical education. His current teaching interests include tutoring medical students as they prepare for national exams and exploring how best to incorporate artificial intelligence into medical training.
Bill Budington is a longtime activist, cryptography enthusiast, and a senior staff technologist on EFF's Public Interest Technology team. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and cited by the U.S. Congress. Bill's primary interest lies in dismantling systems of oppression, building up collaborative alternatives and, to borrow a phrase from Zapatismo, fighting for a "world in which many worlds fit." He loves hackerspaces and getting together with other techies to tinker, code, share, and build the technological commons.
Michael Caprio works at Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe producing core programming for public and educational programs and coordinating volunteer data. He has developed entrepreneurial innovation and STEM educational curricula for myriad commercial, NGO, governmental, and institutional organizations, and has worked for decades as a grassroots community organizer and an open source software and free culture advocate. Michael worked for five years at the American Museum of Natural History in the BridgeUP: STEM program for women and girls pursuing careers in science and created a 1000-member museum hackathon community. He also founded Space Apps NYC and cultivated that 3000-member community over five years for the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. He intends to repeat all of these successes and more at TSCW!
Dr. Gregory Carpenter is the principal partner of CW PENSEC, holds the title of Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in London, and was named the National Security Agency's Operations Officer of the Year. He is a coauthor of Reverse Deception and an advisor for RedSeer Security, a senior advisor for ARIC, Inc., and a special operations medical association member. He holds a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Science, and a doctorate in public health. His professional certifications include Certified Information Security Manager, Lean Six-Sigma Black Belt, and ISO-9000 lead auditor.
Elina Castillo-Jimnez is a feminist lawyer and human rights strategist, committed to using her voice and skills to contribute to building a more just and inclusive world. She started law school at 16, convinced it would give her the tools to understand and promote social justice. After a J.D. in the Dominican Republic, she pursued an LL.M. She is Amnesty International's security lab researcher on targeted digital surveillance.
Ezana Ceman is product manager for data platforms at OCCRP. She is focused on building Aleph Pro - a platform designed to directly support the global investigative community and help strengthen the fight against corruption and organized crime.
Danny Chan received his MSc in microbiology during the course of his PhD candidacy in S.aureus infectious disease models using skin organoids. He was a research technician for many years in multiple fields including cellulostic ethanol production, protein crystallography, prefrontal cortex development, and heat shock proteins before working as a medical editor, fact checking pharmaceutical ads in an agency. He seeks to apply his skills and knowledge of science and industry with compassionate sensibilities in order to foster new institutions that empower folks with the tools of biotech. Currently, he freelances, organizes with various autonomous collectives, teaches, and pursues independent research centered around protocol development for the DIY science community.
Lena Cohen is a staff technologist with EFF primarily focused on developing Privacy Badger - a browser extension used by over three million people to stop companies from tracking their activity as they browse the web. At EFF, Lena also works on issues of commercial surveillance, the data broker industry, and consumer privacy. Lena holds a degree in computer science and science, technology, and society from Brown University.
Elizabeth Jane Cole is a cofounder of Evil Twin Booking Agency, a speakers agency dedicated to advancing new ideas while transforming culture. The agency was created as a culture jamming project that challenged institutions of power by bringing emerging ideas from science, journalism, and environmental activism into the broader culture. While running the company, she has helped develop the concept, story, and strategy for projects that promote rational thought, access to information, and intelligent debate, as well as independent critical thinking. She is a cofounder of Offworld Voyage, a project which develops ecologically sustainable training habitats for use in space analog research missions that also solve for adaptation to climate change on Earth. She is an alumna of the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) and a core committee member of The Journal for Space Analog Research (JSAR), a project of the Mars Society. In the past, she has written for Wired Magazine and other publications. She has also written and produced an episode for NPR's Love and Radio podcast.
Adam Cook has been a dedicated harm reduction volunteer since 2000, beginning with DanceSafe and later working with organizations including Bunk Police, Harmonia, Harm Reduction Circle, and Grassroots Harm Reduction. He now works exclusively with SafeRaveNYC. With a background as a chemistry minor, Adam specializes in reagent testing and is proficient in advanced methods such as thin layer chromatography, having conducted over 10,000 substance tests throughout his career. In addition to drug safety, Adam advocates for consent education and sexual violence prevention, drawing from his own experience as a survivor to address these issues with urgency and empathy.
Scott Cook is a former Air Force cyber defense operator who conducted and led several defensive and offensive cyber operations on both IT and OT/ICS mission systems. He performed web application pentesting and red teaming for the Coast Guard. He held a position at Capital One conducting tactical cyber threat intelligence, reverse engineering, and detection engineering.
Joseph Cox is an investigative journalist covering surveillance, the digital underground, and privacy. He is a co-founder of 404 Media, a journalist-owned tech website. He is also the author of Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever, which tells the inside story of how the FBI secretly ran an encrypted phone company to wiretap the world.
Philip Daian is a researcher and entrepreneur focused on blockchain security, decentralized systems, and cryptoeconomic design. He is a cofounder of Flashbots, an organization addressing MEV (maximal extractable value) transparency and fairness in Ethereum. Philip previously conducted academic research at Cornell Tech, contributing to foundational studies on smart contract vulnerabilities and blockchain incentives. He is widely recognized for his work bridging theoretical computer science and real-world protocol development. Through his work, he aims to build more secure, equitable, and censorship-resistant decentralized technologies.
Sabar Dasgupta is an electrical and software engineer based in Queens, New York City. They are currently employed at Stanford University as an open-source systems engineer and build tools for researchers related to data collection and automation. They are interested in self-hosting, hybrid cloud infrastructure, and sharing repair skills.
Abigail De Kosnik is a poet, Jedi princess, and former director of the University of California Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM). She is a professor at Berkeley who researches histories and theories of new media, film and television, social media, fan studies, piracy studies, cultural memory, and archive studies. Her methodologies include oral history, data science/digital humanities, discourse analysis, and textual analysis. She is particularly interested in how issues of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and transnationalism intersect with new media studies and performance studies. She leads the Media Education Research Lab (MERL), which is developing a diversity scoring system for film and television texts, and a toolkit for measuring and mapping peer-to-peer network traffic.
Benjamin De Kosnik got his USR dual standard the old fashioned way, helped run the 2600 meetings in Austin in the 1990s, and is currently an artist and engineer who works on browser performance and web standards at Mozilla. He has a multi-decade involvement with free/open software projects including Gecko, Fedora, GCC, Boost, LSB, and others. In 2017, he cofounded the alpha60 project, which designed, implemented, and continues to operate a super-saturation peer to peer sampler that has been used to sample 491 file sets, consisting of over 80,000 unique files, counting network activity by over 438 million unique users. He hacks TV.
Davis DeWitt is a practical effects engineer, inventor, and filmmaker based out of Los Angeles with over eight years of experience in the film/TV industry. In that time, Davis has worked in front of the camera as the electronics expert on Discovery Channel's Motor Mythbusters, and behind the camera on countless films and TV series, building everything from on-screen robots to remotely controlled full-sized cars.
Ebmbat is a violinist and hacker who seeks out cutting-edge technologies with a creative approach to design and build innovative solutions. Ebmbat's interests in music and more than a decade of experience in computer security helps Ebmbat push technical boundaries and understand systems from a grounded human perspective.
Arthur Edelstein has been working on web browser privacy since 2014. He has worked as a browser privacy engineer at Tor, a product manager for Firefox privacy and security at Mozilla, and a browser privacy engineer at Brave. Privacy innovations he has helped to ship in browsers include: Tor circuit isolation in Tor Browser; Resist Fingerprinting, HTTPS-Only Mode, and Total Cookie Protection in Firefox; and HTTPS by Default in Brave. He launched PrivacyTests.org in October 2021 while gainfully unemployed.
Klil Eden is an AI developer at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Jane Eklund is the digital rights program manager for Women on Web (WoW), which is a Canadian nonprofit organization that has supported access to abortion for care seekers in over 180 countries. She focuses on advocacy initiatives related to digital resilience to abortion censorship globally. Prior to her role at WoW, she supported Amnesty International USA's work to fight the suppression of reproductive health and rights content online as the tech and reproductive rights fellow, and assisted AIUSA's gender, sexuality, and identity program on state-level abortion rights work and research on human rights abuses against Indigenous women in the U.S.
Mark El-Khoury started as an offensive security consultant, doing penetration testing and code and design reviews. He then expanded his skillset into the defensive side, leading cybersecurity at various organizations and industries, including gaming, fintech, and biometrics. Mark is a conference speaker, holds security certifications, and was an instructor at a Columbia University cybersecurity bootcamp for over four years. He is now director of security engineering at Movable Ink.
Craig Fahner is visiting assistant professor in the integrated design and media program at New York University. His research and creative work questions and reimagines the ways in which media shape everyday life. He is a co-investigator on the Mellon Foundation-funded data fluencies project, which seeks to establish a critical public culture around data-oriented technologies.
Daniel Finegold is an actor, standup comedian, and experienced lockpicking instructor.
Vinicius Fortuna leads Google Jigsaw's Internet Freedom team, advancing Internet standards and spearheading Outline VPN to keep millions connected past censorship. He previously helped create Google Search Knowledge Panels, bringing structured answers to billions of users. After discovering a passion for electronics at HOPE, he now leverages his software and product development expertise to make technology more accessible through workshops.
Dominick Foti is a professor of cybersecurity at Marist University. Dominick began his career developing cybersecurity intelligence for the Department of Homeland Security in 2014. Since then, he has held roles with large corporations, such as Price Waterhouse, Coopers, and Advance Publications, consulting Fortune 500 companies on cybersecurity strategy, risk, vulnerability management, threat intelligence, application security, and incident response.
Cara Gagliano is a senior staff attorney with EFF. Her practice focuses on trademark, copyright, and free speech issues, especially helping fight attempts to use IP law to silence activists, artists, and critics. She also works on EFF's Coders' Rights Project, assisting programmers, developers, and researchers who are helping to build a safer future for us all. Across her work, Cara takes a particular interest in cases supporting the rights of incarcerated people. Cara came to EFF from O'Melveny & Myers LLP, where she focused on trademark litigation and a pro bono docket centered on constitutional rights. Cara holds a J.D. from New York University, where she's an alumna of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program, and a B.A. in linguistics from Northwestern University.
Jack Gangi has been part of the hacker community for decades and credits it with shaping who he is today (for better or worse). In 2007, he cofounded New Jersey's first hackerspace, helping lay the groundwork for a thriving local tech scene. He also owned and operated a comic book store for 12 years. With over 20 years of experience building and sustaining third spaces, Jack's work centers on creating environments where counterculture, creativity, and connection can thrive.
Seth Godin has been online since 1976 and has seen systems come and go. He's best known for his work in marketing and for starting one of the first Internet companies.
Vladislav Gostomelsky is a principal security engineer specializing in embedded systems security, operational technology, secure design, and offensive cyber operations.
Yael Grauer is a program manager at Consumer Reports, where she conducts cybersecurity research on the policy team. She's written reports, articles, and consumer guidance on consumer VPNs, memory safety, stalkerware, people search removal services, and so much more. Yael's background is in investigative tech reporting.
Johannes Grenzfurthner (monochrom) manipulates people to positively respond to his lies and made-up realities, and he feeds off these emotions. He is an award-winning artist, filmmaker, author, and performer. Johannes lives and works in Vienna, Austria. He is the founder and artistic director of monochrom, an internationally acting art and theory group and film production company. Boing Boing referred to him as a leitnerd, a wordplay that ironically hints at his role in nerd/hacker/art culture.
Dana Gretton is a multidisciplinary maker interested in applied linear algebra, security hardware, autonomous planes, UV air sterilization, and VR interface design (notably the Bird 3D cursor). Outside of tech, he enjoys riding electric unicycles, writing Chinese characters, making glass beads, and singing. His current projects focus on rethinking education with new tools like *DAS (decentralized accreditation), engineering mentorship, and cooperative living.
Based in Vienna, Jasmin Hagendorfer is a contemporary artist, filmmaker, and curator, known for her bold approach to sociopolitical topics and gender identity. She is the co-founder and festival director of the Porn Film Festival Vienna, a unique event combining feminist and queer perspectives with art and pornography. Her TEDx talk "How Good Porn Can Save the Planet" explores the environmental potential of alternative porn. She contributed to Fragile Fäden - Beziehungsweisen im Kapitalismus and is co-editor of the Arse Elektronika anthology Sexponential. Her short films, including Musings of a Mechatronic Mistress, Slugfest, and Fudliaks! Tear The Sexes Apart!, have screened at festivals internationally and merge media art with critical cultural reflection.
Dr. Phill Hallam-Baker has 30 years experience in designing web and identity infrastructures. His design credits include seminal contributions to HTTP/1.0, SAML/1.0, and the architecture of the WebPKI. His current research focus is developing personal privacy technologies using threshold key infrastructure.
Harry Halpin is the cofounder of Nym Technologies. He also has been a longtime anarchist and has over a thousand pages in his last FBI disclosure, over ten years ago. He received his PhD in informatics from the University of Edinburgh, standardized the WebCrypto API, and quit W3C/MIT over their standardization of DRM in web browsers.
Haxedalot is a hacker and cybersecurity professional with over 30 years of experience in technical security, networking, and digital forensics. With a background spanning federal law enforcement, military cyber defense, and leading roles in corporate security, their expertise blends deep technical knowledge with hands-on experimentation.
Bob Hermes is a lifelong engineer and maker who loves solving puzzles and sharing the joy of discovery with others. He founded Lockpick Extreme with his partner Christine Bachman to spread their delight of lockpicking. Together, they have taught thousands of people the joy of lockpicking at in-person conferences and remote events.
Adam Hesch is a U.S. Navy veteran with a business operations background across startups, big tech, and defense tech. Having always wanted to be a hacker, he found unexpected success in the areas he least expected: policies, people, and processes. He currently leads Operations at All Points Investigations LLC, a private investigations firm with a focus on aggressive open source and cyber investigations.
Dorothy Howard is a researcher, archivist, and open knowledge advocate.
William Hutson is a Guyanese immigrant living in Flushing. He is the founder of Flushing Tech, and has organized biweekly hackathons for almost two years. He enjoys devops engineering during the day, and some combination of being a maker, athlete, wonderer, and citizen the rest of the time.
Fred Jennings is a technology, cybersecurity, and data privacy lawyer, previously in-house counsel at Zocdoc and at GitHub, where, among other responsibilities, he led company responses to government demands for user data and major data minimization projects. Before that, he litigated at Tor Ekeland PLLC, representing clients in criminal and civil CFAA cases across the country and headed the firm's digital forensics department. He assists clients in navigating the complex laws around data privacy and infosec.
Victoria Joh is an electronics enthusiast and computer scientist who is currently specializing in cybersecurity for operational technology. In her spare time, she is getting back to her roots in programming and learning about electrical and computer engineering. Last year was her first at HOPE. She is returning this year, inspired by the continued developments in the HOPE badge hacking community - and is looking to give back in this year's workshop.
Sheshananda Reddy Kandula is a staff security engineer at Adobe with over 15 years of experience in application and cloud security. He specializes in securing web, mobile, API, and GenAI platforms and leads cross-functional security efforts across large development teams. He holds OSWE, OSCP, and CISSP certifications and is passionate about integrating security into the software development lifecycle. Sheshananda actively contributes to the cybersecurity community through research, speaking, and mentorship. 
Marlon Kautz is a fellow at Community Justice Exchange, where he organizes the Movement Infrastructure Research Network, an anti-surveillance R&D lab. He is cofounder of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund and is currently facing political prosecution for his work helping arrested activists access legal representation and bail assistance.
Josh King is the cofounder of Throneless Tech, a DC-based tech worker cooperative. They have two decades of experience in software development, software architecture, network engineering, and systems administration for social justice. They develop community-oriented technology and secure communication platforms to enable the work of organizers, activists, and journalists globally.
Kody Kinzie is a security researcher who specializes in open source intelligence and Wi-Fi security. He teaches cybersecurity to beginners on two popular YouTube channels called Hak5 and Null Byte, as well as organizing cybersecurity training and outreach events in Los Angeles.
John Kiriakou is a former high-ranking CIA counter-terrorism officer and the first U.S. official to confirm CIA torture of detainees. Punished for being a whistleblower, he served nearly two years in a federal prison. He also exposed the CIA's role in the secret rendition and torture of Canadian citizen Maher Arar in Syria. Since his release, he has become a leading advocate for transparency, civil liberties, and whistleblower protections. He is the author of several books and regularly speaks on topics related to surveillance, intelligence overreach, and ethics in national security. John co-teaches cybersecurity and anti-surveillance seminars with Yale Privacy Lab founder Sean O'Brien and continues to challenge the culture of secrecy and unaccountable power in the intelligence community.
Adam Klasfeld is a longtime legal journalist who was in the courtroom the moment Donald Trump became a convicted felon. In addition to regular appearances on MSNBC's The Last Word - including every day for seven weeks during the Trump trial - Adam has appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe, CBS's Inside Edition, the BBC, NBC, Sky News, and many other outlets. His belief in the ability of fact-based reporting to empower audiences in an age of pessimism and despair inspired him to create his new outlet, All Rise News.
Logan Klein is a recent graduate of Alfred State College with a B.Tech in cybersecurity and over 2,500 hours of hands-on penetration-testing experience. As a results-driven offensive security professional, he specializes in identifying and exploiting OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities.
Jaguar Kristeller is an Alaskan-grown, MIT 2016 mechanical engineer and passionate educator committed to working in climate mitigation, public education reform, personal data empowerment, and digital governance systems. Having spent five years in China post-graduation, he speaks fluent self-taught Chinese and now lives in Boston working between the U.S. and China in IoT manufacturing. Some of his notable achievements include: helping start a high school, Moonshot Academy in Beijing, co-developing a decentralized accreditation system (starDAS), and volunteering to develop a fleet of autonomous fixed-wing emergency medical delivery drones in rural Mexico.
David Kuszmar is the AI adversarial researcher responsible for systematized exploitation of over ten large language models across eight major AI developers. He is credited with the discovery of six distinct vulnerabilities (Time Bandit, Inception, 1899, Severance, Kyber, Semantic Slide, and Eidolon) which expose emergent, systemic weaknesses in modern LLM architecture. His work has directly informed security and mitigation efforts at Carnegie Mellon SEI-CERT, Epic Games, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, and Anthropic.
LambdaCalculus is a hacker and longtime Linux user and sysadmin who knows the importance of education and information sharing, and is passionate to his core about human rights issues and community outreach. He has spoken at length about Linux distros from oppressive regimes, including North Korea's Red Star OS, and understands how these regimes wish to stifle the flow of information. He is also an unashamed sharer of information and old school punk, and loves to make a good meal for his friends.
Sahil Lavingia is a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) engineer who was fired after speaking to a journalist about what was actually going on inside the organization.
Lydia Laurenson started her digital media career as an obsessive teenage MUD player. Then she became a well-known blogger (pseudonym Clarisse Thorn). She's been all over Internet media and now publishes her own magazine (The New Modality), as well as a Substack called Solar Light.
Micah Lee is a member of the Lockdown Systems collective. He's a coder, a security engineer, and a journalist. He develops open source privacy and security tools, and he's done a lot of work related to journalism and whistleblowing. He wrote a book that teaches people how to analyze hacked and leaked datasets titled Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations.
William Lessard spent many years turning zeroes into ones, scaling companies from bootstrapped to IPO. He is now working to dismantle gatekeepers and put communication back in the hands of the people.
Evan Light is an associate professor of policy studies at the University of Toronto's faculty of information. He does research on state surveillance, biometrics, and creative approaches to policy. His deobfuscating state surveillance project aims to map out state surveillance in Canada.
Brais Macknik-Conde is a student at Townsend Harris High School and Queens College. He has qualified twice for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) and is a recipient of the President's Volunteer Service Award. Brais interns at the Brooklyn Public Library, plays violin and piano, and hosts a weekly mathemagic and recreational math circle.
José Martinez is a senior grassroots advocacy organizer and is a longtime trainer and agitator. You may remember him from such workshops as "How Not to Talk to Law Enforcement" and "Grand Jury Resistance for the Soul."
Amelia Marzec is an artist engaging with communications infrastructure to inform a speculative future. Her work has been exhibited at SIGGRAPH, MIT, ISEA (Canada), University of the Arts Helsinki (Finland), ONCE Foundation Contemporary Art Biennial (Spain), NODE Forum for Digital Arts Biennial (Germany), and is part of the Rhizome ArtBase at the New Museum. She was a resident at Eyebeam, Ox-Bow, and Harvestworks; a fellow at NYFA and Columbia University; a visiting artist at CalArts; and nominated for the World Technology Awards for Art. She holds an MFA in design and technology from Parsons, and a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts.
Ken Mayers has taught about instructional technology and human rights (among other things) since the 1980s. He is also a veteran reader of 2600 Magazine (since the 1980s) and HOPE attendee (since the single digits). He is the chair of the North Africa Coordination Group at AIUSA and has worked closely with human rights defenders from Western Sahara across to Egypt since 2008.
Meredith spent much of her life immersed in code and circuits before turning her attention to the wild intelligence of plants. Now a clinical herbalist and remedy maker, she works with the Mugworts Free Herbal Clinic, a grassroots care project dedicated to health sovereignty and community resilience. Meredith brings a hacker ethic to the world of herbal medicine, celebrating the beauty, complexity, and radical diversity of nature.
Tess Mishoe is a hacker at heart who enjoys making, breaking, and dissecting every new piece of tech she can get her hands on. When she's not performing research on authentication data, she's usually found tuning her antennas towards the stars or writing up the latest malware sent to her inbox. She lives happily with her hacker-in-training and loving partner and can be found knitting when out and about.
Andrew Morican is a lifelong violin player/teacher and coder. He is an instructor for the Community School of Music and the Arts at Canadian Mennonite University, a member of the musical act Andrew&Andrew, and has been the CTO for iSBERGDATA since 2018.
Alex Muentz is both a lawyer and cybersecurity professional. He's worked with a bunch of companies you've heard of and a few you haven't. When he's not working, he occasionally teaches classes and tells fun stories.
Murph is a system administrator in New Jersey, desktop Linux user, hackers.town resident, and EFF member. This will be murph's 21st year attending HOPE, presenting workshops at several of them.
Dan Nagle is a senior principal software engineer for Insight Global. In his 20-plus years of software development experience, he has written and published apps for desktop, mobile, servers, and embedded. He is the author and inventor of Packet Sender, an app used daily by security researchers - featured in manuals from major tech companies and taught in universities around the world. He is also the author of two network-related patents and a book published by CRC Press. His open-source contributions have received international awards, and he has presented at many developer conferences about them.
Netspooky is a security researcher and artist. He works on hacking zines Phrack and tmp.0ut, and runs the annual Binary Golf Grand Prix file format hacking party.
nop tinkers with radios and computers, and is interested in computer security and privacy.
Daniel Nowak is a highly experienced professional with a broad and advanced set of skills, specialized in areas that are crucial for cybersecurity, intelligence, and digital operations. Daniel has over 25 years within the global information security community. His work involves a mix of technological expertise and strategic advisory roles, helping various high-profile entities navigate complex and sensitive domains.
Sean O'Brien is the founder of Yale Privacy Lab and a research fellow at Yale Law School. A security researcher with extensive experience uncovering surveillance in mobile applications, Sean has spent over a decade advocating for digital rights, open-source solutions, and decentralized technologies. As the driving force behind StickTock.com, he leads PrivacySafe's mission to develop free and open-source tools that empower users to protect their privacy and regain control over their digital experiences.
Omar is a security engineer who focuses on building secure and reliable systems and, in general, enabling people to do their best work safely. He enjoys doing offensive security research and finding ways to integrate that into his day-to-day work to make it more impactful. Omar has spoken at multiple conferences on a wide range of topics such as reverse engineering, exploitation techniques, and building useful security tools. Omar is currently a senior staff security researcher at Betterment.
Felix Orozco is an artist, technologist, and furry advocate who is the beating heart behind Retia, creating the art behind the Nibble and Nugget designs and organizing ethical hacking outreach at conferences. After working at technology startups and running her own virtual office business, Felix began organizing hands-on cybersecurity outreach events with a distinctive cute design to make beginners feel welcome. You can find her at our conference booths and teaching our soldering classes.
Xavier Palmer is an engineer across multiple disciplines, with work focused largely in biomedical contexts. He is fond of positive and creative projects that foster curiosity and helpful conversations around technologies that interface with biology.
Josefina Piddo is a graduate student at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. She is a policy, analysis, and assessment intern with the U.N. Office of Digital and Emerging Technologies and assistant director with the Cyber Care Institute. Josefina is a journalist and communications specialist, earned an MS in strategic communications, and worked previously with the Inter-American Development Bank and the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Patrimony in Chile.
Lucas Potter is a biomedical engineer specializing in the integration of biology, medicine, and engineering to design and optimize medical technologies. Throughout his academic career, Lucas has contributed to various research projects, focusing on areas such as biocybersecurity, virtual surgical planning, and the security risks associated with (IoT) health devices.
Vladimir Prelovac is the CEO of Kagi. Originally from Yugoslavia, he believes technology should advance humanity, not just ad-clicks. He is inspired by visionary builders and dismayed by the focus of mainstream tech, which he believes insults user intelligence. As a lifelong builder whose roots trace back to creating MUDs, he now builds Kagi and Orion to provide concrete, user-funded alternatives: search without ads or tracking, and tools that put users back in control, directly rejecting the surveillance model. His interests include strategic gaming and endurance sports.
Evan Prodromou is the research director of the Social Web Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to a bigger, better Fediverse. He is the editor of the ActivityPub specification at the W3C, and the author of ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web.
Roman Pushkin is a security researcher and staff software engineer at a payment startup by day, hacking hardware and dissecting financial systems by night.. With 20 plus years in hacking and infosec, he's authored a book titled Ruby Is for Fun book and contributed to 2600: The Hacker Quarterly.
Michael Raymond is a vCISO and compliance professional who thrives on exploring the bleeding edge of tech. In his earlier career, Michael was a security researcher and video producer, delivering live-streamed educational content on channels like Null Byte, SecurityFWD, and Hak5. Outside of his day job, Michael's curiosity drives him into the realms of hardware, electronics, and aerospace. Whether it's tracking airplanes through ADS-B, diving into signals intelligence with SDRs, home automation with Home Assistant, or uncovering other obscure niche topics, he brings the same passion and friendly enthusiasm to every new challenge.
redshiftzero is a member of the Lockdown Systems collective. She's an engineer and researcher working on privacy-enhancing technologies. Previously she's worked on whistleblowing platforms, anonymity networks, and private payments systems.
Harper Reed is perhaps best known for serving as chief technology officer for the Obama 2012 campaign, where he was instrumental in helping President Barack Obama secure a second term in office. He frequently speaks on a wide range of topics where technology overlaps with society.
Dan Romanchik (KB6NU) has been a ham radio hacker since he was ten years old. He enjoys all kinds of ham radio activities, but his favorite things to do are operating CW and teaching ham radio classes.
Cora Rowena Ruiz is a PhD student at the City College of New York. Her research interests are in practical computer security and privacy for vulnerable populations. She holds a bachelor's degree in cybersecurity from Albertus Magnus College, where she specialized in digital forensics and investigation.
Ed Ryan is a New York intellectual property attorney specializing in patents, with a background in physics. Ed's practice deals heavily with machine learning technologies.
George Sandford is a lifelong breaker of things and a seeker of knowledge. He makes his living doing security stuff, trying like crazy to do better, and making the world a better place for as many people as he can. He's a moderately excellent cook, a failed monk, and a dad who wishes hugs could fix everything.
Annika Santhanam is an audio professional, network artist, and community educator with a masters degree in interactive media and a current fixation on "the public". She is constantly working with her hands, and is a fierce advocate of doing (mostly) whatever you want.
Laura Sang Hee Scherling is a director and lecturer at Columbia University. She teaches in the tech policy and innovation concentration. She is the founder of the Cyber Care Institute and cofounder of Civic Art Lab. Her books include Future of Hacking, Ethics in Design and Communication, Digital Transformation in Design, and Product Design, Technology, and Social Change. Laura has contributed to Tech Policy Press, Design Observer, Brookings, and the Urban Activist. She is passionate about tech ethics, Internet freedom, and cybersecurity awareness.
Roel Schouwenberg has over 20 years of experience in the security field. He has engaged in long-term campaign and actor tracking across the cyber, influence, and information domains. One of Roel's areas of interest is how state actors are leveraging offensive cyber and social media for deniable operations.
David "Heal" Schwartzberg is a cybersecurity professional, known for his expertise in infosec, ethical hacking, and data protection. With more than 29 years of experience in the cybersecurity field, David has worked with leading organizations to develop strategies for safeguarding sensitive data and defending against evolving cyber threats. He is the founder of Hak4Kidz, a non-profit organization focused on teaching cybersecurity skills to youths.
Jason Scott directed three documentaries, including BBS, GET LAMP, and DEFCON, as well as pre-production for other projects, during which he interviewed over 300 individuals, historical figures, and spontaneous bystanders.
Jared Skolnick is cofounder of the national nonprofit Grassroots Harm Reduction, and also the founder of the locally based SafeRaveNYC. Jared has been participating in harm reduction for almost a decade and provides harm reduction services throughout New York City nightlife. In addition to "how to use substances more safely," Jared also teaches sexual violence prevention and does marketing and freelance writing revolving around NYC nightlife and electronic music.
Skyper was editor of Phrack Magazine from 2001 to 2006 and a researcher at team-teso and THC. Skyper loves Unix, provides free root servers (such as segfault.net), and does network protocol shenanigans. Born as a blueboxer.
Adam Sobel is an award winning vegan chef who founded The Cinnamon Snail, once a wildly popular food truck and restaurant in New York City. Adam has cooked at the James Beard House, represented the USA at the World Street Food Congress in the Philippines, has appeared on the Food Network, Cooking Channel, PBS, and on the pages of The New York Times, New York Magazine, Vegetarian Times, and VegNews. He is the author of the popular cookbook Street Vegan, and runs Vegan University, an online culinary education program.
Travis Southard is a Philadelphian queer solarpunk web developer. During the day he is the senior developer and data analyst at Community Legal Services Philadelphia, and after work he volunteers as one of the two co-directors of Code for Philly. Before getting into software, Travis was a bike mechanic and bike tour organizer.
Samantha Stortz is a sophomore at Marist University majoring in cybersecurity. She is currently a first-year research intern on the dark web scraping project, where she researches machine learning. Samantha is expected to graduate in the spring of 2027 and aspires to pursue a career in the cybersecurity field.
Dejan Štrbac built and scaled a beloved global email hosting service (migadu.com) used by millions worldwide. Frustrated by the direction email has taken, he's now a sworn enemy of SMTP.
Robert Stribley is a user experience design professional with over 20 years of experience. He worked with dozens of brands at Razorfish and Publicis Sapient before recently starting his own small company: Technique. He teaches UX design at the School of Visual Arts and speaks regularly on the subjects of user experience design and privacy by design. He has just completed a book on the topic of design for privacy for Rosenfeld Media.
Michael Taggart is a cybersecurity researcher and educator, passionate about making technology skills accessible to all. The Taggart Institute provides low or zero-cost training for cybersecurity and programming topics and his book, The Homelab Almanac, has been called "the best guide to homelabs out there." He is also an occasional blogger, writing extensively on the dangers of AI and other uplifting topics.
Daniel Temkin created languages like Entropy, FatFinger, and Folders. A collection of his work, called Forty-Four Esolangs, will be published by MIT Press this September. His blog esoteric.codes has covered esolangs for over ten years. Funded by Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation, it was exhibited at ZKM for their 2018 Open Codes show and written in residence at the New Museum's NEW INC incubator. Daniel has spoken about esolangs at conferences including SXSW, SIGGRAPH, Gulaschprogrammiernacht, FOSDEM, Media Art Histories, and many others.
John Threat is a world renowned hacker, futurist, global security issues advisor, artist (MoMA PS1), writer/director, professor, and former bicycle messenger. He's been on the cover of Wired Magazine, featured on 60 Minutes, and pops up in everything from The New York Times to Telemundo. He consults with several futurist think tanks and co-founded Rip Space, an art/tech/media/hacker project and exhibition space in Los Angeles.
TMZ is a hobbyist security researcher and editor for Phrack Magazine, with a deep passion for underground computing culture. He also cofounded the ELF research group and online zine tmp.0ut.
Craig Topham came to work for the Free Software Foundation as a copyright and licensing associate at the end of 2018. Some of Craig's FSF duties include: handling copyright assignments, GPL compliance for FSF-copyrighted works, and helping with the Respect Your Freedom program. Besides the desire to see free software thrive, Craig also envisions a world where everyone's inner light shines bright.
Alexander J. Urbelis is a CISO and cybersecurity attorney. He has been part of the information security community for more than 20 years and has deep and varied experience as a C-level officer in two of the world's most distinguished international brands. Alex has also been in-house counsel, a private practice litigator, and a federal attorney.
Ken Vedaa has spent over two decades of work experience in a variety of infosec roles. After years of wrestling with security concerns in highly regulated environments, he became convinced that the divide between computer geeks and attorneys was too great, leading him to go to law school to bridge the gap.
Jeffrey Velez has been a dedicated and active volunteer at Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe (TSCW) for nearly a decade, supporting the mission of turning Nikola Tesla's lab into a museum and global science center. He wears many hats as a TSCW volunteer, using his tech skills and scientific and historical knowledge to support operations and provide educational demonstrations and talks at numerous events and expos. Jeff is also very excited to be a founding member of the newly established Tesla Science Center amateur radio club!
Joe Vella owns a small instrument and effects company called Electro-Faustus. Founded in 2008, they make synths, photo theremins, and other assorted devices. In 2020, Joe also founded a hackerspace on Long Island called the Evil Electronics Klub. The guitar booster project is an outgrowth of that club.
Gabrielle Joni Verreault is a PhD candidate in bioethics at Universite de Montreal. She explores the intersection of bioethics and technology to address emerging ethical challenges in the digital age. Applying bioethical frameworks to cyberspace, she identifies herself as a cyberethicist, focusing on how technology can empower civilians in conflict situations and support ethical practices in complex, high-stakes environments.
Vivekanand Pandey Vimal is a research scientist in the Ashton Graybiel Spatial Orientation Lab. His research is focused on spatial disorientation and human augmentation. He also works on a number of multidisciplinary creative projects that mix science and art to explore the deeper philosophies of human augmentation, such as exploring how to create a feeling of oneness in a group of dancers who receive vibrotactile feedback.
Danacea Vo is a cybersecurity professional and social justice hacker from Vietnam, whose expertise lies in bridging technical knowledge with social impact strategies. As the founder and CEO of Cyberlixir, she develops digital strategies designed to empower marginalized communities, nonprofits, and human rights defenders worldwide. She has worked with national and global coalitions to support social justice movements through cyber resilience in the face of repression. Her expertise has been recognized in Wired Magazine, and featured in awesome initiatives such as HOPE XV, the Google Privacy Summit, and PBS's Nova.
Robert Wagner is an advisory CISO and has been a highly respected security practitioner, advisor, and strategist for over 20 years. His security experience ranges from defending everything from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies, major universities, and financial institutions. He is a co-founder of the not-for-profit organization Hak4Kidz, serves on the board of the Chicago ISSA chapter, and regularly volunteers for various hacker cons including Bsides312, BlueTeamCon, and others.
Wailun is the founder of SQFMI, a company based in New York City which created Watchy, an open-source E Ink watch.
Todd Whitney builds environmental sensors and makes narratives from the data that sensors generate. He uses his background in radio journalism and hardware fabrication to design critical interventions in science communication and foster community power for environmental issues. He is currently a fellow at the Social Science Research Council, working to make it possible for others to design their personal priorities around the environmental issues that matter most to them.
Marcia Wilbur is an advocate for privacy-focused, open source technology. She has developed AI-powered, voice-activated free software tools designed for secure, offline use. Her work emphasizes accessibility, user control, and federated communication to enhance privacy in the digital age.
Ed Wilson was licensed as an amateur radio operator back in 1993 and was issued the call sign N2XDD. After a nearly 20-year hiatus to focus on his career and start a family, Ed rejoined the ham radio community, eager to catch up and communicate. His interests in radio include emergency communications, home brewing, and digital modes. Ed currently serves as community manager for the M17 Project, a new open source digital radio protocol. He has been granted the exciting opportunity to establish a radio club at the Tesla Science Center (N2TSC), focusing on diversity and inclusion for the next generation of ham radio operators. Ed is vice president of the Suffolk County Radio Club and has acted as vice director of the ARRL Hudson Division.
XlogicX hacks at obscurely low level technology with no impact. He has unmasked sanitized IP addresses in packets (because checksums) and crafts his own pcaps with just xxd. He feeds complete garbage to forensic tools, AV products, decompression software, and intrusion detection systems. He made evil strings more evil (with automation) to exploit high consumption regular expressions. He believes assembly language can be too high level at times and has a general distrust for abstractions. He wouldn't identify as a video game developer but has created a handful of 512 byte games in the form of boot sector. He likes to craft his own length/distance pairs to compress his own Deflate data (stay tuned for more ignorance in that space!).
Mu Yang is a behavioral neuroscientist at Columbia University Medical Center. She is also a "sleuth" whose reports have led to over 180 retractions since 2022. She had a lead role in the Eliezer Masliah (the former director of neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging (NIA)) case.
