There’s a question that surfaces constantly in tech circles: who is the most brilliant coder alive today?

The usual names come up — Linus Torvalds, John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard. All deserving. But there’s someone whose body of work rivals any of them, and most people outside the security world couldn’t name him.

His name is Christien Rioux.

When people talk about the Cult of the Dead Cow, the world’s oldest and most famous hacking group, the story usually centers on a handful of guys in the 1980s and ’90s: Grandmaster Ratte’, Mudge, DilDog, the Back Orifice saga. The names most people know are male. But cDc’s history has always included women, and honestly, that’s one of the most interesting parts of the story that rarely gets told.