kchoudhu · 5 years ago

Oh no.

cyberlab · 5 years ago

You can watch one of his talks here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAGwol-keXM and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xneBjc8z0DE

He always had a certain eccentricity to him. I never met him in person. He always was the prototypical nerd judging from his talks and mannerisms.

andrewnicolalde · 5 years ago

Wow... I remember recreating his DNS cache poisoning attack in one of the courseworks I did in my second year of university. I always thought it was incredibly clever...

sakebomb · 5 years ago

You will deeply be missed @dakami

haik90 · 5 years ago

you'll be missed Dan Kaminsky

rurban · 5 years ago

His last twitter activity was April 18

saul_goodman · 5 years ago

Damn. Fuck.

atdrummond · 5 years ago

Could we respect the wish of those close to the deceased to keep speculation as to the cause of death private?

Lethabow · 5 years ago

Died yesterday. RIP https://www.latestnewssouthafrica.com/2021/04/24/security-re...

mmaunder · 5 years ago

RIP Dan.

https://youtu.be/RAGwol-keXM

blondie9x · 5 years ago

Does anyone know what happened?

nly · 5 years ago

A shock for sure. I'm sure he will be sorely missed to all of us who attend CCC.

You can see many of his CCC talks here:

https://media.ccc.de/search/?q=Dan+Kaminsky

omnibrain · 5 years ago

;(

@dang can we get a black bar please?

randomhodler84 · 5 years ago

Dan is a legend and great defender of the internet. His research made us safer, and his guidance made us more secure. We will miss you Dan, and may your memory and spirit resolve and soar through the clouds.

davidu · 5 years ago

I 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 against a serious and significant vulnerability. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for this and so much of his other work.

He was a hacker's hacker, and the guy you want in your corner. Very sad to hear this news.

quelsolaar · 5 years ago

I had dinner with Dan once, he ”social engineered” me and claimed he forgot to bring money. I knew what he was doing, but also knew that if picking up the tab was the price i had to pay for getting to hang out with him, I got the better end of the Deal. Rest In Peace

ttul · 5 years ago

Dan was at Santa Clara in the spring of 1998 when I was there on an exchange. Unbeknownst to me, I was watching South Park in the dorm’s TV lounge next to a future internet legend. We later made the connection through mutual friends and he became a technical advisor to my startup.

Dan was always generous with his time and expertise. He was the kind of person whom you could expect could easily become very rich, but was entirely unmotivated by money. Dan was fascinated to learn the inner workings of things we all take for granted - such as the DNS. A true hacker.

HugoDaniel · 5 years ago

:( RIP

thathndude · 5 years ago

I’m not in the industry. But I instantly recognize the name from the occasional touches I have with info sec. that tells me all I need to know About how big of a loss this is.

Condolences to those who knew him.

rishabhd · 5 years ago

RIP Dan, he was a legend.

borski · 5 years ago

‘dang, can we get a black bar for Dan? I can’t think of many people who deserve it more.

qyi · 5 years ago

Heard of him since his DNS vulns. Never read or watched his presentations until recently. It was a breath of fresh air seeing him talk. I thought "this is a true hacker. no corporate BS". Damn.

sneak · 5 years ago

Dan always went out of his way to do nice things based on his resources and connections to benefit me, when he totally didn't need to. A lot of the great things and people in my life came from him.

The world is worse off without him.

jpgvm · 5 years ago

Loss of a legend, CCC and Blackhat will never be the same.

automathematics · 5 years ago

RIP to a legend

rediguanayum · 5 years ago

RIP thank you Dan for making the internet a safer place.

Dieselroar88 · 5 years ago

Dan was a wonderful human. I truly cannot believe that he took the time to help create something with me.

Absolutely god damn heart breaking.

A wonderful reminder that true brilliance and humanity can coexist.

Thank you for everything

ryan-c · 5 years ago

I remember attending Dan Kaminsky’s talk at DEFCON 12 and being blown away by it. Three years later, I went on the original “Hackers on a Plane” trip and ended up seated next to Dan on one of the flights. We quickly became friends. His mentorship over the years had an enormous impact on me.

We both went back to CCCamp in 2011. I excitedly told him about a reverse DNS scanning project (0.0.0.0/0 in 12 hours on AWS for like $50), and then we ended up talking about the Debian RNG bug and password security, walking around camp watching the lightning in the distance.

When I was doing my original brainwallet research back in 2013 and cracked the woodchuck wallet the first thing I did after showing my ex (then girlfriend) was call him. I told him I’d found something but didn’t feel comfortable discussing over the phone. He invited me over.

My ex and I hopped on BART headed into SF and met him at the loft he was living at above a motorcycle shop. We talked and carefully planned and then I accidentally made 250 BTC vanish.

Dan looked at me and said “[my ex] and I are going to go for a walk and return with burritos. You’re going to calm down and have this fixed by the time we get back. It’ll be okay.”

It was, and I did. I’d simply forgotten about change addresses for a brief moment of terror.

I think the first time he mentioned wanting to hire me was a few months later at a Bitcoin conference in San Jose. He believed in me. I went on to work alongside him at White Ops (now known as Human Security) in 2014. He brought me on stage with him at DEFCON that year.

He spent a lot of time helping me put together a CFP submission about my brainwallet research for DEFCON the following year and then helped me put together slides, rehearse, and had a professional help me refine everything. I couldn’t have done it without him.

My wedding was about six weeks before DEFCON - Dan showed up in an Uber, about an hour late. He explained that he’d confused Menlo Park for Morgan Hill when planning to leave. I was just thrilled to have him there.

Dan was a supportive friend, a great mentor, and a delightful colleague. I really can’t overstate what a positive impact he had on my life. It’s hard to believe he’s really gone. That I’ll never get to swap stories about our respective side projects with him again.

I miss him.

https://rya.nc/threads/dakami-eulogy.html

https://twitter.com/ryancdotorg/status/1385989257638993922

sneak · 5 years ago

Does anyone have a copy of the sources for Paketto Keiretsu? It seems to have disappeared from his website(s) some years ago and I kept meaning to ask him for a copy.

It was an early inspiration for a lot of my L3-in-userspace work.

jka · 5 years ago

My memory of Dan is seeing him speak on-stage at SF security b-sides, some time in the mid 2010s.

He'd enjoyed a few drinks by the point he spoke to everyone, and the resulting honesty (accompanied by what I sensed as trepidation from the audience, about seeing a respected speaker in a vulnerable state) left a mark on me.

He was right: software security nowadays is a swiss-cheese mess, and the industry isn't addressing it.

His speech instructed me and perhaps others in the audience to deal with that new reality and adjust to it. It's tough for the original hacker / cypherpunk / purist mentality to adjust to. But it's where we are now, and it's a mindset that'll never die even if all of us that subscribe to it do.

RIP Dan.

edgan · 5 years ago

He will be dearly missed. :(

He gave the best Defcon talks.

0xbadcafebee · 5 years ago

Aw poop. Nicest guy I ever met in the hacker scene. Sending best wishes and love to his friends and family.

laurex · 5 years ago

Dan sublet my apartment a number of years ago, and it was a thrill to see the impact of his work over time. I'm very sad to hear this news.

Communitivity · 5 years ago

A sad day. A legend has passed - legendary for his skills, for his generosity, and for his personality. He was a true renaissance man - hacker, writer, presenter, philantropist, piano-player, composer, and good guy.

1cvmask · 5 years ago

RIP Dan. Dan was one of the great reasons to attend in person the Vegas security circus (B Sides, Black Hat and Defcon). My other favorite presenters ranged from Barnaby Jack (also deceased) to Moxie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnaby_Jack

filmgirlcw · 5 years ago

H was a wonderful person who was always generous with his time. I’m so sad that he is gone. It isn’t hyperbolic to say that we as a tech community are better because of him.

samatman · 5 years ago

December 2019. I flew out to SF, and we hacked for ten days.

He saved our company from extinction. I won't discuss the sequel to that, because it doesn't reflect well on some people who don't deserve that in this eulogy. But I will say that we retained our friendship through it all.

I'm absolutely gutted at this news. What a shining human being. A terrible loss.

dominicjj · 5 years ago

Apart from the DNS cache poisoning attack, Dan did some vital followup work on the Sony CD rootkit discovered by Mark Russinovich. Sony's early defence was that it wouldn't affect the Internet. Dan showed using DNS caches that it had already affected over half a million networks on the Internet: https://web.archive.org/web/20080423212131/http://www.wired....

A smart man and a nice man. RIP.

yownie · 5 years ago

Him along with Aaron Schwartz, two great hackers cut down too early.

j3th9n · 5 years ago

"Of the seven Recovery Key Shareholders who possess the ability to restore the DNS root keys, Dan is the American representative." -https://dankaminsky.com/bio/

rdl · 5 years ago

Dan was basically the best example of "infectious enthusiasm" combined with being really smart and interested in a lot of stuff. He was one of the first "security people" who got interested in bitcoin as a network, plus all his DNS stuff, and a lot of other things. He's going to be missed by a lot of people around the world for a long time.

Rafuino · 5 years ago

I met him at Defcon 21 and ran across him again when I was running a developer hardware access project in my last job just a couple years back. He struck me as incredibly curious (as a hacker must be!) and was a pleasure to work with. The friends who introduced me to him at Defcon are devastated for a reason... rest in peace.

rmac · 5 years ago

Seeing him present his work on stage at DC was one of those things I'll never forget: the technical excellence, the dazzling visualizations, his comfortable and confident style, and whether you agreed with it or not -- his own point of view, not a thinly veiled corporate / gov / academic shill.

Dan: streams a tv show over DNS

Crowd: goes wild

He was one of the ones who I aspire to be: to show others they can do .*

bitexploder · 5 years ago

I first met Dan on Slashdot over 20 years ago. Over a decade after I first met him on Slashdot I got into information security and had the opportunity to share a few meals and hangout with Dan now and again. His natural curiosity about all technology is what I always will remember about Dan. He was such a good technologist. RIP.

Edit: plus watching him and tqbf argue on Twitter about stuff was always fun.

billyhoffman · 5 years ago

I met Dan at FooCamp in 2004. I was a college kid at the time and a weekend event of people like Larry Wall or Ester Dyson was super intimidating.

I was feeling a little isolated and lonely when I saw this guy in a black 2600 tshirt over by the “FooBar” bar and thought “finally someone I can talk to!” He was so welcoming and engaging it broke the ice and made the whole weekend worth it. We started talking about tunneling various protocols over DNS and ended up doing a midnight stroll with Fyodor all around Sevastopol looking for “interesting” things.

That’s the kind of guy Dan was. Everyone felt his warmth.

Dan was a rare mix of genius with an over the top personality. Seeing what crazy RFC-bending project Dan was doing was one of the best things about going out to Blackhat, DEFCON, or RSA. He is easily one of the best presenters I’ve ever seen: a perfect blend of compelling story, esoteric tech details, and those classic Dan mischievous grins.

I will miss you dearly Dan

vabmit · 5 years ago

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.

tlb · 5 years ago

What a shame. I had many enjoyable conversations with him over the years at various events. He was a hacker's hacker and a gentleman.

sillysaurusx · 5 years ago

I’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.

ChrisMarshallNY · 5 years ago

I 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.

burtonator · 5 years ago

This 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.

psaux · 5 years ago

Dan 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.

adfm · 5 years ago

I first met Dan in Santa Clara at some event when he came over to our table and showed off some ssh fu. We’d reconnect at events every so often and he’d always share his latest interest. I recall once Dan turning me on to the unique world of software produced and shared primarily by doctors who code by opening a video of a jet engine crash landing in an MRI viewer app. The time after that, he was telling me about going to see the new Star Trek movie that had just come out and how his friend couldn’t see the green alien lady, which led him to build one of the first truly useful applications of augmented reality with his colorblindness app.

When people say Dan Kaminski was a hacker’s hacker, it’s with good cause. Not only did he defend the Internet from itself, but he changed the way people see the world. He put a noticeable dent in the universe.

madrox · 5 years ago

I met Dan at BarcampLA, and his talks stuck with me. I’ve relived moments from those talks throughout my career, and I’m a more security conscious person because of it. He was one of those rare security folks that still retained his fundamentally optimistic view of humanity, though I think that may be rare of any human now that I think about it. If Tomorrowland were an actual thing, Dan definitely would’ve been invited. I hope he knew how much he inspired.

melb-un-er · 5 years ago

Oh no! I met Dan during my time first working on DNS in 2008. He came to many of us with the cache poisoning bug he discovered and pulled us together to address the vulnerabilities before it became public. I remember thinking thank god this guy is using his powers for good, because the damage he could easily do would be significant. After that I ran into him numerous times over the years, at conferences and airports (we seemed to always be leaving or arriving from different places at the same time), and he was always so kind, interesting and interested. I feel lucky to have known him. The works is a sadder, emptier place today.

lawrenceyan · 5 years ago

Through it all, there were those who fought valiantly against the tsunami of fakery and fabrication, generating new methods and protocols to hold back the tide undermining consensus reality.

Rest in peace Dan.

alisonkisk · 5 years ago

The 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?

wheresmycraisin · 5 years ago

Dan was exceptionally good at explaining his complex work, and he always did so with 100% passion. He will be missed.

fortran77 · 5 years ago

His final tweet:

https://twitter.com/dakami/status/1383978072655818753

brownglock · 5 years ago

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.

josh2600 · 5 years ago

Dan 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.

sillyquiet · 5 years ago

So 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.

beprogrammed · 5 years ago

Damn, we are all worse off for it.

moepstein · 5 years ago

I loved the complexity of his thoughts, and the nonlinearity of our conversations. The way I could plop down next to him, ask him what he was doing, working on, or thinking, and he always had the time and inclination to talk without a hint of condescension. I'll miss his infectious excitement, the way he could weave narratives from lines of code, and his goofy sense of humor.

nomy99 · 5 years ago

I’m one of those people who never knew you. Ironically, Your death brought forth your achievements for me. I’m impressed and I wish I had interacted with you. RIP

alexnewman · 5 years ago

I hope when I die people care

walterbell · 5 years ago

Short tribute from Elonka Dunin earlier today, https://www.facebook.com/elonka/posts/10164920101840459

candeira · 5 years ago

Dan answered earnestly and generously to some uninformed questions I emailed him at random one day.

He was a good man. My condolences to his friends and family.

davrosthedalek · 5 years ago

It feels wrong to upvote a story of somebody dying. How about such stories are pinned and don't have to be voted on to stay on the front page, at least for a couple of days?

swat535 · 5 years ago

Let us take a moment to slow down and think about how fragile life really is. Dan was a bright person and loved by many. The value he added to this world will not be forgotten and let us take comfort in the fact that some of us had the great fortune of meeting him. Rest in peace Dan.

notklaatu · 5 years ago

It's so sad to lose Dan. I met him back in 2008, I think it was, at a Barcamp in L.A. I was lucky enough to precede his talk, and he was gracious enough to sit through mine. He was a blast to talk to and to learn from. Even his questions were educational.

For me, he was one of my earliest examples of what a hacker was and should be. I aspire to his level of curiosity, openness, and kindness, and he'll be missed.

zestyping · 5 years ago

Kind, generous, warm, infectiously enthusiastic, and always curious. I have long held kindness and curiosity as the highest of virtues and that's what comes to mind when I think of Dan, together with a crushing sadness at what we have lost.

This is a lovely moment I captured of Dan having a good time. I like 0:29 in particular, and wanted to share it with you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4jRaetW7k0

vages · 5 years ago

Has anyone else noticed the thin black bar across the top of the HN pages today? I think it may be because of this.

jdougan · 5 years ago

I had a few hours with Dan at a Think Conference, back in 2008. I was working on a Smalltalk implementation of SSL, and it was having connection issues to different servers. So someone pointed me at him, and he walked me through how to troubleshoot it. Didn't find the problem then, but it made it a lot easier later.

He was one of the good guys. I'll miss him.

bunnie · 5 years ago

Dan will be missed. I am saddened by his passing and my heart goes out to his family.

strenholme · 5 years ago

Rest in peace Dan Kaminsky and prayers for his family and friends. He was a very good colleague and someone who I am honored to have interacted with.

(Context here: He publicized a big DNS security hole which my MaraDNS never had, because I read Daniel Bernstein’s writings)

samhwr · 5 years ago

NXDOMAIN :(

throwaway039093 · 5 years ago

My very first memory of the in-person security world is from watching Dan talk outside of the Alexis Park back in 2004. I was drinking bourbon from a plastic water cup. He was doing a live demo showing streaming audio proxied by DNS servers. I will never forget the sense of wonder I felt listening to that talk.

relyks · 5 years ago

I really wish HN had the black bar linked to an obituary or an article about the person (or some other method of distinguishing who it is for). It isn't always obvious who is being recognized or memorialized. Getting the black bar isn't that common

ponytech · 5 years ago

I am among the people who met him at a conference (CCC 2006 for me) and at the after party. I remember he was super friendly. I'm very sad to hear that news. RIP