Wade Alcorn (@WadeAlcorn) has been in the IT security game for longer than he cares to remember. A childhood fascination with breaking stuff and solving puzzles put him on the path to his career.

Wade is the creator of BeEF (The Browser Exploitation Framework), which is considered one of the most popular tools for exploiting browsers. Wade is also the General Manager of the Asia Pacific arm of the NCC group, and has led security assessments targeting critical infrastructure, banks, retailers, and other enterprises.

Wade is committed to the betterment of IT security, and enjoys contributing to public groups and presenting at international conferences. He has published leading technical papers on emerging threats and has discovered vulnerabilities in widely used software.

Christian Frichot (@xntrik) has been into computers since the day his dad brought home an Amiga 1000. Having discovered it couldn't start Monkey Island with its measly 512KB of RAM, he promptly complained until the impressive 2MB extension was acquired. Since then, Christian has worked in a number of different IT industries, primarily Finance and Resources, until finally settling down to found Asterisk Information Security in Perth, Australia.

Christian is also actively involved in developing software; with a particular focus on data visualization, data analysis, and assisting businesses manage their security and processes more effectively. As one of the developers within the Browser Exploitation Framework (BeEF), he also spends time researching how to best leverage browsers and their technology to assist in penetration testing.

While not busting browsers, Christian also engages with the security community (have you seen how much he tweets?), not only as one of the Perth OWASP Chapter Leads, but also as an active participant within the wider security community in Perth.

Michele Orrù (@antisnatchor) is the lead core developer and “smart-minds-recruiter” for the BeEF project. He has a deep knowledge of programming in multiple languages and paradigms, and is excited to apply this knowledge while reading and hacking code written by others.

Michele loves lateral thinking, black metal, and the communist utopia (there is still hope!). He also enjoys speaking and drinking at a multitude of hacking conferences, including CONFidence, DeepSec, Hacktivity, SecurityByte, AthCon, HackPra, OWASP AppSec USA, 44Con, EUSecWest, Ruxcon, and more we just can't disclose.

Besides having a grim passion for hacking and programming, he enjoys leaving his Mac alone, while fishing on saltwater and “praying” for Kubrick's resurrection.

Ryan Linn (@sussurro) is a penetration tester, an author, a developer, and an educator. He comes from a systems administration and Web application development background, with many years of information technology (IT) security experience.

Ryan currently works as a full-time penetration tester and is a regular contributor to open source projects including Metasploit, BeEF, and the Ettercap project. He has spoken at numerous security conferences and events, including ISSA, DEF CON, SecTor, and Black Hat. As the twelfth step of his WoW addiction recovery program, he has gained numerous certifications, including the OSCE, GPEN, and GWAPT.

Martin Murfitt (@SystemSystemSyn) has a degree in physics but has worked as a penetration tester of various forms for all of his professional career since graduating in 2001 and stumbling randomly into the industry. Martin's passion for computing developed from a childhood of BBC micros in the 1980s. It isn't over yet.

Martin is a consultant and manager for the EMEA division of the global Trustwave SpiderLabs penetration testing team. SpiderLabs is the advanced security team at Trustwave responsible for incident response, penetration testing, and application security tests for Trustwave's clients.

Martin has discovered publicly documented vulnerabilities on occasion, presented sometimes or been working behind the scenes at conferences, such as Black Hat USA and Shmoocon, but generally prefers to be found contemplating.

Dr.-Ing. Mario Heiderich (@0x6D6172696F) is founder of the German pen-test outfit Cure53, which focuses on HTML5, SVG security, scriptless attacks and—most importantly—browser security (or the abhorrent lack thereof). He also believes XSS can be eradicated someday (actually quite soon) by using JavaScript. Mario invoked the HTML5 security cheat sheet and several other security-related projects. In his remaining time he delivers training and security consultancy for larger German and international companies for sweet, sweet money and for the simple-minded fun in breaking things. Mario has spoken at a large variety of international conferences—both academic and industry-focused—co-authored two books and several academic papers, and doesn't see a problem in his two-year-old son having a tablet already.