Alexander Peslyak (Александр Песляк) (born 1977), better known asSolar Designer, is a security specialist from Russia. He is best known for his publications on exploitation techniques, including thereturn-to-libc attack and the firstgeneric heap-based buffer overflow exploitation technique,[1] as well ascomputer security protection techniques such asprivilege separation fordaemon processes.
Peslyak is the author of the widely popular[2]password cracking toolJohn the Ripper. His code has also been used in various third-party operating systems, such asOpenBSD andDebian.
Peslyak has been the founder and leader of theOpenwall Project since 1999. He is the founder of Openwall, Inc. and has been the CTO since 2003. He served as an advisory board member at the Open Source Computer Emergency Response Team (oCERT) from 2008 until oCERT's conclusion in August 2017.[3] He also co-founded oss-security.[4]
He has spoken at many international conferences, includingFOSDEM and CanSecWest. He wrote the foreword toMichał Zalewski's 2005 bookSilence on the Wire.[5]
Alexander received the 2009 "Lifetime Achievement Award"[6] during the annualPwnie Award at theBlack Hat Security Conference. In 2015Qualys acknowledged his help with the disclosure of aGNU C Librarygethostbyname function buffer overflow (CVE-2015-0235).[7]
