[1] He has been actively involved in the free and open-source software community and is a long time Debian developer.
He was interested in Unix in high school but due to the curriculum design of his computer class, he didn't have access to it until university.
[3] Coker has given talks and lectures on the topic of Linux security for many free and open-source software conferences including SELinux Symposium,[10] FOSDEM 2003,[11] Debconf[12] and LCA.
Russell Coker used to host a SELinux-enabled server with open root access, allowing anyone on the internet to login as 'root' (administrator account) to demonstrate SELinux can create a secure system without using the Unix permissions model.
[14] The server was powered by a Compaq P3-800 system running Debian/Etch in a Xen DomU and provided SSH access via a Tor hidden service.