Hector Martin Cantero (born September 9, 1990), also known as marcan, is a Spanish
security hacker known for hacking multiple
PlayStation generations, the
Wii and other devices.[1] Martin is lead developer on the
Asahi Linux project.[2]
Biography
Education
Martin went to the American School of Bilbao (Spain), where he received his primary and secondary education.[3]
Career
Since 2011, he has been an official staff volunteer at Euskal Encounter, Gipuzkoa Encounter and Araba Encounter
LAN parties. He is the coordinator of the
Free Software area, where he organizes the "Hack It / Solve It" competition (a cybersecurity challenge known as
capture the flag) and the "AI Contest" competition.[4][non-primary source needed]
He has been part of fail0verflow, (formerly known as Team Twiizers) where he was responsible for
reverse engineering and hacking the
Wii.[5] He was the first to write an open source driver for the
Microsoft Kinect[6][7] by reverse engineering[8] for which he was widely credited.[9][10] Sony
sued him and others for hacking the PlayStation 3; the case was eventually settled out of court.[11][12] In 2016, he ported
Linux to the
PlayStation 4 and demonstrated that at the 33rd
Chaos Communication Congress by running
Steam inside Linux.[13] He wrote the usbmuxd tool for synchronizing data from
iPhones to Linux computers.[14]
In 2021, Martin founded the
Asahi Linux project, an effort to
port Linux to the new
Apple silicon-powered
Macs. He currently remains the lead developer on the project.[15][16] While reverse engineering Apple's hardware, Martin discovered the "
M1racles" security vulnerability on the
Apple M1 processor.[17][18]
^Sharwood, Simon (21 March 2022).
"Asahi Linux reaches 'very early Alpha'". The Register. Retrieved 17 May 2022. Asahi Linux – the most prominent effort to create a Linux distribution for Apple's M1 silicon – has loosed what project lead Hector Martin has described as 'a very early alpha release.'