I know Peter Zatko (mudge) professionaly (having spoken at computer security conferences and worked at more than one company that also worked with him), and personally (to an extent, hung out and talked at aforementioned security conferences, talked on irc And email in the good old days of #hack and bugtraq, and have several friends in common, was extremely impressed talking to him about how to disclose a bug I and the l0pht had independently discovered back in the day), and reputationally (the guy demanded, rightfully, a ton of respect amongst peers back then and now). I have a very hard time with this characterization.