HD Moore
termsecurityhacking
The creator of Metasploit, the open-source exploitation framework released in 2003 that turned exploit development from artisanal one-off code into a shared platform with modules, payloads and a common interface.
Metasploit did for offence what a package manager did for software distribution, and the argument about it has never fully settled - it lowered the barrier for defenders and attackers on the same day. Moore also ran the Month of Browser Bugs, publishing a flaw a day to force vendors to move, and later scanned the entire public IPv4 internet repeatedly to measure what was actually exposed. Both projects share his method: make the uncomfortable truth impossible to ignore.
Also known as: metasploit, hdm, month of browser bugs