Samuel Hocevar (born 5 August 1978) is a French

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

and

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

. He was the project leader of the

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

operating system from 17 April 2007 to 16 April 2008, and one of the founding members of

Goatse Security Goatse Security (GoatSec) was a loose-knit, nine-person grey hat hacker group that specialized in uncovering security flaws. It was a division of the anti-blogging Internet trolling organization known as the Gay Nigger Association of America (GN ...

Biography

Hocevar was born in

Forbach Forbach ( , , ; gsw, Fuerboch) is a commune in the French department of Moselle, northeastern French region of Grand Est. It is located on the German border approximately 15 minutes from the center of Saarbrücken, Germany, with which it const ...

Moselle The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...

, France. From 1995 to 1997, he took preparatory classes at the

Lycée Fabert Lycée Fabert is a senior high school in Metz, Moselle department, Lorraine, France. The school, in the city centre, was the first lycée in Metz. Facility The high school consists of several buildings. They include: * The old lycée called "l' ...

Metz Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand E ...

, France. He graduated in 2002 from

École centrale Paris École Centrale Paris (ECP; also known as École Centrale or Centrale) was a French grande école in engineering and science. It was also known by its official name ''École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures''. In 2015, École Centrale Paris mer ...

, after receiving the "Award of Information Technology and Communication" from the

SNCF The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (; abbreviated as SNCF ; French for "National society of French railroads") is France's national state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the country's national rail traffi ...

as the most promising student in his class. He specialized in electromechanical systems and applied mechatronics, and project management. From 2005 to 2006, Hocevar was a

Wikimedia France Wikimedia chapters are national or sub-national not-for-profit organizations created to promote the interests of Wikimedia projects locally. Chapters are legally independent of the Wikimedia Foundation, entering into an agreement with the founda ...

board member. Hocevar has been active in the

project, and was elected Debian project leader on 17 April 2007. Hocevar's Debian leadership platform stated a preference for finishing larger numbers of small projects in succession, echoing the Japanese management philosophy of ''

Kaizen is concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. ''Kaizen'' also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organ ...

'' that constant, incremental improvements to a project would generate more gains per unit of time than large single leaps of performance. Hocevar was succeeded by Steve McIntyre on 16 April 2008. Hocevar has also contributed to the

VideoLAN VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VL ...

project. He has made large contributions to almost all software of the VideoLAN project, especially to

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desk ...

and

libdvdcss libdvdcss (or libdvdcss2 in some repositories) is a free and open-source software library for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS). libdvdcss is part of the VideoLAN project and is used by VLC media p ...

, since 1998. He is the author of various

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

programs, such as , a data

fuzzer In programming and software development, fuzzing or fuzz testing is an automated software testing technique that involves providing invalid, unexpected, or random data as inputs to a computer program. The program is then monitored for exceptions ...

, and

libcaca libcaca is a software library that converts images into colored ASCII art. It includes the library itself, and several programs including cacaview, an image viewer that works inside a terminal emulator, and img2txt, which can convert an image t ...

, a color

ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant chara ...

renderer. He is also the current maintainer of the

Extension Language Kit Extension Language Kit (ELK) is a free Scheme implementation which is embeddable in C and C++ programs, but can also be used as a stand-alone Scheme interpreter. It is available under a custom permissive license for any use, commercial or noncomm ...

Scheme A scheme is a systematic plan for the implementation of a certain idea. Scheme or schemer may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''The Scheme'' (TV series), a BBC Scotland documentary series * The Scheme (band), an English pop band * ''The Schem ...

interpreter, which has found use in many multimedia applications including audio processing. Hocevar has worked on

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

and

image processing An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

. He

reverse engineer Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompli ...

ed DVD

subtitles Subtitles and captions are lines of dialogue or other text displayed at the bottom of the screen in films, television programs, video games or other visual media. They can be transcriptions of the screenplay, translations of it, or informati ...

in 2000, and in 2005, it was found that the DRM software which triggered the

Sony BMG CD copy protection scandal A scandal erupted in 2005 regarding Sony BMG's implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management ...

had unlawfully pirated

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

code from the VideoLAN project which Hocevar was involved in authoring. Hocevar's experience in image processing includes authoring a

CAPTCHA A CAPTCHA ( , a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") is a type of challenge–response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. The term was coined in 2003 ...

decoding framework called PWNtcha. PWNtcha was the first CAPTCHA decoder framework to defeat multiple CAPTCHAs and was referred to as the "most famous" CAPTCHA breaker in a 2009

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

publication. Hocevar authored the

WTFPL WTFPL is a permissive free software license. As a public domain like license, the WTFPL is essentially the same as dedication to the public domain. It allows redistribution and modification of the work under any terms. The title is an abbreviat ...

version 2, an extremely liberal,

permissive free software license A permissive software license, sometimes also called BSD-like or BSD-style license, is a free software, free-software software license, license which instead of copyleft protections, carries only minimal restrictions on how the software can be us ...

that is recognized by the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

. He has also been cited for his "whimsical"

copyleft Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, ''freedoms'' refers to the use of the work for any purpose, ...

activism. Hocevar is part of

, an

information security Information security, sometimes shortened to InfoSec, is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorize ...

working group which revealed a security flaw in

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

's website, leading to the release of 114,000 email addresses of

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

users.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hocevar, Sam 1978 births Living people People from Forbach French computer programmers Debian Project leaders École Centrale Paris alumni French computer scientists French Wikimedians Apple Design Awards recipients