Trivia

In 2002, he was bumped from a segment of NBC News with Tom Brokaw. NBC had asked Lamo whether he could hack into NBC's own systems -- which, to the dismay of studio executives, in under five minutes, on the clock, on camera, he did.

Lamo was dubbed the "Homeless Hacker" by the media for his cross-country exploits. Riding Greyhound, couch-surfing, squatting, and using public Internet to compromise high-profile company networks -- and then fix their security problems for free.

He spent a week on the run from the FBI in late 2003. He surrendered to face charges of hacking into the New York Times & Microsoft after the FBI's lackluster effort to locate him failed.

In 2003, he became the first guest to be interviewed on TechTV's The Screen Savers (albeit by telephone) while on the run from the FBI.

Son of Mario Lamo and Mary Atwood.

In 2010, Lamo exposed the largest leak of classified data in U.S. history, a theft of classified data by a U.S. Army soldier passed on to Wikileaks. His testimony resulted in a 35-year sentence for for the now-former source. Lamo continues to maintain his location and personal life a secret due to threats of reprisal for his testimony.

Prevailed in a long-running court case, successfully preventing the FBI from requiring a blood sample for mandatory DNA analysis (USA v. Lamo) (July 2007)

Sacramento, CA - Former Chief Scientist at Reality Planning LLC, a threat analysis & development concern. (2009)

Litigated against mandatory DNA collection by the federal government, and worked as a Sacrament-area journalist. (July 2006)

Completed a 30-month federal probation sentence. (2006)

Lamo worked as a threat analyst in the Washington DC area, and also continued his work in journalism.

Lamo wrote prolifically on Quora answering questions on a variety of topics. His responses received over 10,000,000 views in his first few months of use.

The cause of his death was never definitively identified despite a complete autopsy. Lamo was known to use the supplement kratom, and several medications known to cause harmful interactions with kratom were found in his apartment, leading investigators to suspect an accidental death due to drug abuse.