The senior research fellow at Symantec Security Response, Gordon is an expert on the psychology of virus writers and hackers. And she's on a mission to clean up stereotypes about these "bad guys." Contrary to popular myth, Gordon says, cyber-rebels aren't . . .
The senior research fellow at Symantec Security Response, Gordon is an expert on the psychology of virus writers and hackers. And she's on a mission to clean up stereotypes about these "bad guys." Contrary to popular myth, Gordon says, cyber-rebels aren't underground loners, and they're not necessarily nerdy--or even smart. She believes they join "the dark side" of the Internet because they don't extend the same moral code from the real world to the virtual world. She blames teachers, journalists and parents for the breach.

Gordon lives in upstate New York with her husband, Internet architecture expert Richard Ford. She met him in England in 1994, when Ford was editing Britain's "Virus Bulletin." Ford attacked Gordon in an editorial for failing to attend a conference in Bulgaria. She called to complain, and he asked her to lunch. Thus began a trans-Atlantic courtship via Unix chats, which continued until they were married in 1995.