RIP, Dan. I work with a lot of very smart people. So, I've gotten a bit used to it and don't normally find myself in awe of many people's intelligence. Dan was a person that I was absolutely in awe of. The fist time I met him very long ago (almost 20 years), he showed me code he wrote to share movies through abused DNS slaves... building a p2p network like Napser/Gnutella from the technology. No one had ever thought of such a thing. I don't think anyone else in the world knew DNS well enough to be inspired to think of it. He was so kind and friendly to everyone. It was fun to talk with him about tech/security because he had such enthusiasm and excitement... like a little kid on Christmas or a puppy. :) I learned a lot from him. I have nothing but great memories of him. I remember once when someone hacked him. He even took that in good humor and didn't let it bother him.
Dan Kaminsky has died
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Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#102Does anyone know what happened?
The tweet specifically asks us not to speculate and the parent article makes mention that the conditions of his death have not been made public. I’m not sure how others feel, personally I am conflicted: respect the death of an icon and not pry (even if others are speaking on his behalf) or satisfy my curiosity. I’m going to go with the former, for now.
If it is another overdose, I’m going to be deeply annoyed with Marc. There is a real problem in this industry and we shouldn’t be burying our heads.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#103I will miss him terribly. He was the guy who let me crash in his room at Defcon when I was a minor and was too young to book my own room. This kicked off 20 years of friendship. He was brilliant, zany, ADD x 1000, and always endearing and loving. In 2008 I was lucky to collaborate on DNS issues with Dan when he discovered a new form of DNS cache poisoning and spent years helping the Internet upgrade and defend agains…
I saw him speak at BlackHat in 2008 when he presented that work -- _everyone_ was there. It was an amazing presentation, and I was properly filled with respect for Dan. So very sad that he's gone so young.
I was there that year, too. And the year before and after. And at ToorCon that year, which was tiny and it was great to talk to him there. Many of my journeys to conferences were because he was on the docket.
A true inspiration in infosec.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#104What a shame. I had many enjoyable conversations with him over the years at various events. He was a hacker's hacker and a gentleman.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#105Him along with Aaron Schwartz, two great hackers cut down too early.
It's Aaron Swartz fyi.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#106I’m shocked. I didn’t know Dan except via Twitter. What happened?
He was so curious about everything that it caught my attention, and I’m not just saying that. He pointed out how good the GPT-Neo samples were, which I hadn’t seen before.
I didn’t know he was anything except an enthusiastic person interested in AI. He even tried to help me with my M1 build of tensorflow. https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adakami%20to%3Atheshawwn&...
I’ll miss him.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#107I did not know him (but I have heard his name for years), but, from the comments here, I feel that the industry has lost a great humanitarian, as well as a skilled and talented person.
So sorry for the loss.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#108[deleted]
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#109This really hits me hard. Dan was the kind of guy you read about and were almost intimidated by his work. Then you met the guy and realized he's just an awesome guy.
This just insanely sad. I'm really sick of hearing about my friends passing - especially when they're brilliant.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#110Dan was a great soul and genius, this is very sad to hear. Dan made life fun, my stomach would hurt from laughing so hard with him. I am looking over our chats, and found a video he sent me that I can’t stop watching. He was working on streaming VM state to the cloud and decided a mouse wasn’t fun, so busted out a turntable to control it in realtime. It totally worked and was way better! He even starts making record scratching sounds. I love how someone posted the DEFCON shot of his nap, that made me smile! Remember those moments of joy.
Much love to his family and friends.