Adrian Lamo

Adrian Lamo is a Boston-born threat analyst and security enthusiast. His former high-profile computer intrusions and involvement with the Wikileaks investigation have been cited in thousands of news articles, numerous television segments, several films, an opera, a theatrical play, and scores of books. After pleading guilty to hacking The New York Times and Microsoft Lamo embarked on a career using his talents for good in critical infrastructure and national security areas. In 2010, Lamo informed the authorities about the alleged plot of an online acquaintance to carry out the largest classified material breach in the history of U.S. espionage, by identifying accused wiki-spy Bradley Manning and triggering Manning's arrest. The material was successfully released by Wikileaks months later, but authorities had time to mitigate the damage it would go on to cause. Lamo's opinion is often sought when events take a hacker-related turn. He was a serial guest on erstwhile TechTV's The Screen Savers (and later on The New Screen Savers), and the featured prominently in the documentary film "Hackers Wanted" narrated by Kevin Spacey . He also featured heavily in Alex Gibney's "We Steal Secrets" and various other documentaries. His work has been cited in scores of books and magazines, been the subject of a theatrical production and an opera, and he has consulted on various book & film productions. He has been on Good Morning America, CNN, Al-Jazeera, Univision, TechTV with Leo Laporte and Kevin Rose, The New TechTV, NHK, BBC, CBS, Fox, and other visual media. He takes a limited number of public speaking engagements. He began writing for The American River Current, his college paper, and has also been published in Network World, Mobile Magazine, PenTest Magazine, 2600 Magazine, PandoDaily, Forbes, Newsweek, The Guardian, Huffington Post, and other publications. His writing on Quora.com often receives millions of views per month. Critics have derided Lamo as publicity-motivated and have ascribed him a variety of ulterior motives, charges which he has consistently declined to "dignify". Lamo has publicly stated that his criminal career is behind him, and assists ProjectVIGILANT & other entities in fighting netcentric (cyber) crime and state-sponsored hacking.