Allison Nixon

Allison Nixon is a cybersecurity researcher and the chief research officer and co-owner of Unit 221B, a New York City-based cybersecurity investigations firm. She is known for her research into DDoS attribution, cybercrime attribution, and English-speaking criminal communities, particularly the loose cybercriminal collective known as The Com. Her investigative work has contributed to the identification and arrest of more than two dozen cybercriminals since 2011, according to FBI officials cited in MIT Technology Review. she presented at Black Hat USA on techniques for bypassing DDoS protection services. She subsequently joined Flashpoint, a business risk intelligence firm, where she served as director of security research.

In early 2020, Nixon joined Unit 221B, a cybersecurity investigations firm named after Sherlock Holmes's address. Flashpoint confirmed the involvement of the Mirai botnet in the attacks. Nixon was a named subject in the resulting cover story by Andy Greenberg in Wired.

The Com and Scattered Spider Nixon has published extensive research on The Com, a loosely affiliated network of predominantly young, English-speaking cybercriminals responsible for a range of offenses including social engineering, SIM swapping, cryptocurrency theft, sextortion, swatting, and ransomware attacks. She has characterized Scattered Spider and related groups as Western, predominantly young cybercriminals who deliberately recruit minors due to the more lenient legal consequences they face. She was featured in The New York Times Presents episode "The Teenager Who Hacked Twitter" (2020), about the 2020 Twitter hack. She also appeared in the documentary series Most Wanted: Teen Hacker (2025).

In May 2026, Nixon appeared in an episode of the Wired web series "Tech Support" to answer questions about cybersecurity.