StankDawg

Early Life and Education

David Blake was born on September 13, 1971, in Newport News, Virginia. He earned an Associate in Applied Sciences (AAS) degree from the University of Kentucky in 1992, followed by a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University. He also holds a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certificate. Blake is a member of the International High IQ Society.

In 1988, while a junior in high school, Blake coined the phrase "The Digital Dawgpound" as a joking reference to his teammates on the way to a "Sweet 16" computer programming competition — a name that would later define his most enduring community project.

Hacking and Community Involvement

Blake adopted the handle "StankDawg" during college, where he began forming connections in the hacking world. After years of operating under various pseudonyms, he became publicly active in 1997, engaging on IRC and smaller hacking forums. He has described his motivation as finding individuals with strong technical skills and a positive attitude toward hacking, and wanting to bring them together in an organized way.

He is a staff writer for 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and contributed to the now-defunct Blacklisted! 411 magazine. He has also written for independent zines including Outbreak, Frequency, and Radical Future. His writing in 2600 spans topics from batch processing systems and web statistics to lottery systems and Google AdWords vulnerabilities, with contributions dating back to 1999.

Blake has been a frequent co-host of Default Radio and a regular on Radio Freek America, and has appeared on GAMERadio, Infonomicon, The MindWar, Phreak Phactor, and Hacker Public Radio (HPR). He appeared as a subject on the Animal Planet television program The Most Extreme, where he demonstrated vulnerabilities in wireless internet connections.

Conference Presentations

Blake has presented at DEF CON, H.O.P.E., and Interz0ne. His most discussed presentation, "Hacking Google AdWords," was delivered at DEF CON 13 in July 2005 and drew public criticism from figures including Jason Calacanis. His presentation at the fifth H.O.P.E. conference on the AS/400 platform was noted for surprising members of that computing community. He also presented "The Art of Electronic Deduction" at H.O.P.E. Number Six in July 2006.

Digital DawgPound

By 1999, Blake had formalized the Digital DawgPound (DDP) as an organized hacking collective, recruiting a mix of hackers, programmers, phone phreakers, security professionals, and artists. The group's stated mission is to promote a positive image of hackers, reinforce the hacker ethic, and demonstrate that hackers make meaningful contributions to both technology and society. DDP members have included staff writers for 2600 and Blacklisted! 411, and the group has featured participation from notable figures such as Strom Carlson, Phiber Optik, and decoder. Members have presented at DEF CON, H.O.P.E., Interz0ne, Notacon, and other conferences.

Binary Revolution

In 2002, Blake began transitioning his personal site into a broader community project. In 2003, he formally launched Binary Revolution (commonly called BinRev), which he described as a movement toward a more positive hacking community. The initiative encompassed Binary Revolution Radio (BRR), the video series HackTV, local BinRev meetings, an IRC network (BRnet), and the DocDroppers document archive project.

Binary Revolution Radio launched in 2003 as a weekly internet radio show hosted by Blake, covering topics including phreaking, cryptography, social engineering, open source software, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and hacker conference culture. Notable co-hosts over the show's run included Tom Cross (known as Decius), Elonka Dunin, Jason Scott, Virgil Griffith, MC Frontalot, and Strom Carlson, among others. Blake took a break in July 2005, during which the show was produced by Black Ratchet and Strom Carlson, before returning in May 2006. The show's first live audience broadcast took place at HOPE 6 in New York City in June 2006. The final episode, number 200, aired on October 30, 2007, running seven hours and twelve minutes.

HackTV, launched in mid-2003, was described as the first internet television show about hacking. It expanded into sub-series including HackTV:Underground, which allowed community-contributed content in any format, and HackTV:Pwned, a prank-style series set primarily at hacking conferences.

Selected Writing

Blake's published articles in 2600: The Hacker Quarterly include pieces on batch versus interactive systems (1999), transaction-based systems (2002), the history of leet speak (2002), robots and web spiders (2003), lottery systems (2004), disposable email vulnerabilities (2005), Google AdWords (2005), and web statistics (2005).