HITB Throwback Thursday: A Cut Above
By: Weixien Toh
When it comes to the world of computer viruses and the folks who hunt those who write them, the name Mikko Hypponen (@mikko) is practically household.
The at-some-point ponytailed (more on this shortly) Chief Research Officer of F-Secure in Finland, Mikko and his team have been hunting the bad guys since the early 90s. He was the first to warn the world about the Sasser outbreak, helped with the takedown of the Sobig.F bot network and exposed the inner workings of Stuxnet - one of the most hugely complex worms designed to sabotage Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. He was also the guy who tracked down and visited the authors of Brain - the first PC virus in history!
Mention the words 'bug bounty' and 'responsible disclosure' to anyone and the name Katie Moussouris (@k8em0) won't be far behind.
Currently Founder and CEO of Luta Security and thanks to her tireless ongoing work advocating for coordinated security researchm Katie is perhaps best described as the 'Bug Bounty Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother’.
She was involved with starting the US Department of Defense's 'Hack The Pentagon' bug bounty program, founded Microsoft's Vulnerability Research (MSVR) program and was essentially one of the key people behind the creation of Microsoft's overall bug bounty initiative (we know - we were there).
So what do Katie and Mikko share in common apart from being amazing humans who’ve formed, changed, and influenced an entire industry? Well they’ve both spoken at multiple HITB events - Mikko first back in 2007 and Katie even more often than she expected!
The most memorable and ‘hair raising’ of these appearances though is undoubtedly HITB’s 10th year anniversary conference in Malaysia where during the post conference charity auction Mikko was ‘challenged’ by Katie to chop off his signature ponytail - for a good cause of course!
The l33t moment and probably the only time he’s prayed for steady hands and for the ‘God of Sharp Scissors’ to smile upon him, was having Dhillon @l33tdawg Kannabhiran, CEO and Founder of HITB getting the honors of snipping off Mikko’s prized locks! If it wasn’t already amazing enough having Mikko agree to have his hair cut by Malaysia’s Floyd the Barber, Katie also followed suit and matched him inch-for-inch - though to be fair she has generous inches to spare!
Take a look back at this historic slice of hairdressing history.
Photo Credit: Digital News Asia
From hackers to ‘hair-kers’, I think it’s safe to say we’ve come a long way baby!
Come let your hair down at HITB CyberWeek Virtual (https://cyberweek.ae/2020) on the 18th and 19th of November where you can literally ask Bruce Schenier anything, chill with the father of DNS, Paul Vixie, play some hacker games, and check out what hair raising insanity researchers are cooking up these days.
