I was fortunate enough to meet Dan in the flesh at RSAC and engage in Twitter conversations after that. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, or at all. No higher praise than that.
Dan Kaminsky has died
131–140 of 216 posts
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#132Dan was like family to me. I remember so many evenings talking to him with all the stops out for countless hours about a universe of topics. Interacting with his brain was like what I imagine it would feel like to be caught between a supernova and a black hole. He was such a generous soul.
There are so many things that existed because Dan sprinkled some magic here and there. He was incredibly charming, making electrons dance in ways I never thought possible. The man was a technomage, a grey-hatted magician.
Dan was far from perfect but I am thankful for every moment I spent with him. He was the first person to tell me that he believed in me when I was starting a hard technology company (I had never really managed any software project before).
I will miss Dan’s kind and generous soul until my dying breath. A true titan in all senses of the word.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#133I was fortunate to be introduced to Dan at RSAC and then engage via Twitter. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, or at all. No higher praise...
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#134I 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 was lucky to collaborate on DNS issues with Dan when he discovered a new form of DNS cache poisoning" A really good, and really detailed, overview of what Kaminsky found: http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/iguide-kaminsky-dns-vuln.htm... Kaminsky references this from the sidebar in his blog.
Wait, they only made this attack 2000 times harder? That was the whole fix?
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#135So many different stories in this thread from people about how much of a mentor, friend, and inspiration he was. There's a simple Yiddish word for this kind of person: mensh.
That's a great tribute.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I was lucky to collaborate on DNS issues with Dan when he discovered a new form of DNS cache poisoning" A really good, and really detailed, overview of what Kaminsky found: http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/iguide-kaminsky-dns-vuln.htm... Kaminsky references this from the sidebar in his blog.
Wait, they only made this attack 2000 times harder? That was the whole fix?
Additional mitigations started to come in to play after that to make it both impractical, detectable, and improbable. It's just shy of impossible now, and in the very unusual scenarios where it's possible, it's so easily detectable.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I was lucky to collaborate on DNS issues with Dan when he discovered a new form of DNS cache poisoning" A really good, and really detailed, overview of what Kaminsky found: http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/iguide-kaminsky-dns-vuln.htm... Kaminsky references this from the sidebar in his blog.
Wait, they only made this attack 2000 times harder? That was the whole fix?
Dan's work pushed the adoption of BCP38, segmentation of authoritative and recursive resolvers, and better source port randomization. Entirely new mitigations were developed like 0x20, source address randomization, and double response detection.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#138The tweet is a strange announcement. Usually an announcement like this is by or refers to next of kin sharing the news. Is Marc Rogers Dan's family, or close friend?
It was the most authoritative report I could find at the time, albeit a reaction to other people having shared the news on Twitter first (I found a number of people complaining at the one or two people who first tweeted about it, saying it shouldn't have been shared so soon.)
In the interim, obviously a great many additional people and sources have reported it that could be chosen instead.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they don't want speculation, they need to give facts. Otherwise all we have is wondering, which naturally leads to speculation. I don't mind them not giving facts. I just think it's silly to not give facts and then tell people not to speculate.
There's nothing silly about requesting decent behavior, even if not everyone will agree to the request.
It's quite decent to wonder why such a talented person, with such a bright future, and so well-known, died prematurely.
The story of how he died could be a valuable cautionary tale for people, as much as his talent and work was inspirational.
Re: Dan Kaminsky has died
#140Damn, we are all worse off for it.