John Viega

John Viega, born February 22, 1974, is an American computer security author, researcher and professional. He earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in computer science at the University of Virginia, where as an undergraduate he worked in Randy Pausch's Stage 3 Research Group as an early contributor to Alice, and where he wrote the first version of GNU Mailman after finding a popular mailing list costly to maintain. He co-authored Building Secure Software in 2001, described as the first book to teach developers about writing secure software, and later co-authored further security books including Network Security with OpenSSL, the Secure Programming Cookbook, Beautiful Security and 19 Deadly Sins of Software Security. In 2005 he co-authored the GCM mode of operation for AES with David A. McGrew, designed to provide both encryption and authentication with one primitive that is cost-effective in hardware and unencumbered by patents. He was also a pioneer in static analysis for security vulnerabilities, responsible for ITS4, and he co-founded Secure Software before holding executive roles at McAfee and SilverSky and co-founding Capsule8.