Hector Martin Cantero (born September 9, 1990), also known as marcan, is a Spanish security hacker and former main programmer for the Asahi Linux project. He is also recognized for hacking several versions of the PlayStation, the Wii, and other devices.

Biography

Martin attended the American School of Bilbao in Spain, where he completed his primary and secondary education.

Since 2011, Martin has worked as a volunteer staff member at Euskal Encounter, Gipuzkoa Encounter, and Araba Encounter LAN parties. He manages the Free Software area, where he organizes the "Hack It / Solve It" competition (a cybersecurity challenge called capture the flag) and the "AI Contest" competition.

Martin was part of fail0verflow (formerly known as Team Twiizers), where he focused on reverse engineering and hacking the Wii. He created the first open source driver for the Microsoft Kinect by reverse engineering, which earned him recognition. Sony took legal action against him and others for hacking the PlayStation 3, but the case was resolved without going to court. In 2016, Martin adapted Linux to run on the PlayStation 4 and demonstrated this by running Steam inside Linux at the 33rd Chaos Communication Congress. He also developed the usbmuxd tool to transfer data from iPhones to Linux computers.

In 2021, Martin started the Asahi Linux project, which aims to adapt Linux to work on Apple computers powered by new Apple silicon chips. While studying Apple's hardware, Martin found a security flaw called "M1racles" on the Apple M1 processor. On February 7, 2025, Martin left his role working directly on the Linux kernel due to disagreements about using the Rust programming language for Linux. On February 14, 2025, Martin resigned as the lead developer of Asahi Linux.