Famed hacker Dan Kaminsky has been inducted in the Internet Society’s Hall of Fame for his groundbreaking contributions to DNS (domain name system) security.
Kaminsky, who passed away suddenly in April this year, was inducted alongside a list of tech visionaries and pioneers being celebrated for “extraordinary contributions” to the worldwide availability and use of the Internet.
“Dan was an outspoken advocate of Internet security and privacy and a determined digital sleuth,” the Internet Society said in a note celebrating Kaminsky’s life, accomplishments and contributions.
“His untimely death at the age of 42 cut short a brilliant career that had by then already made the Internet stronger and more secure,” it added.
In July this year, Kaminsky was inducted into FIRST’s incident response hall of fame.
A regular presence at major security conferences and events over the years, Kaminsky is best known for his groundbreaking DNS cache-poisoning research that prompted an industry-wide scramble to address a major weakness in the way the web worked.
He is also credited with amplifying the severity of the SONY rootkit infections back in 2005.
In June 2010, Kaminsky was named by ICANN as one of the Trusted Community Representatives for the DNSSEC root.
He was a graduate of Santa Clara University with a Bachelor’s degree in Operations and Management of Information Services.
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