Hector Martin
More info
- Alias
- marcan
- Known for
- fail0verflow, Asahi Linux
Spanish console hacker in fail0verflow who showed that Sony signed PS3 code with a constant nonce, and who later founded Asahi Linux.
At 27C3 in December 2010, fail0verflow showed that the PlayStation 3's ECDSA signing used the same random value every time. Two signatures were enough to compute Sony's private key — a textbook case of nonce reuse, and one no firmware update can fix, because the key is already out. Sony sued them, along with George Hotz.
Martin had already helped break the Wii's protections and build the Homebrew Channel. In 2020 he started Asahi Linux to run Linux on Apple Silicon, a reverse-engineering effort of unusual polish. He stepped down in February 2025 after a long-running fight over Rust in the Linux kernel.