Mikko Hyppönen

Mikko Hermanni Hyppönen

Speaking at the TEDxRotterdam conference in 2011
Born 1969 (age 45–46)
Nationality Finnish
Other names Mikko Hypponen
Occupation Chief Research Officer for F-Secure
Awards

Virus Bulletin Award for Best educator in the anti-malware industry 2010[1][2]

#61 Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2011[3]

#43 on the 50 Most Important People on the Web 2007 list by PC World[4]
Website
http://mikko.hypponen.com/

Mikko Hermanni Hyppönen (Finnish pronunciation: ['mik:o 'hyp:ønen]; born 1969 in Finland) is a computer security expert and columnist.

Career

Mikko Hyppönen is the Chief Research Officer for F-Secure. He has worked with F-Secure in Finland since 1991.[2]

Since the 1990s, Hyppönen has assisted law enforcement in the United States, Europe and Asia on cybercrime cases and advises governments on cyber crime.[5] His team has been responsible for taking down the Sobig.F botnet.[6]

In 2004, Hyppönen co-operated with Vanity Fair on a feature, The Code Warrior, which examined his role in the Blaster and Sobig Computer worms.[7]

Hyppönen has keynoted or spoken at various conferences around the world, including Black Hat, DEF CON, DLD,[8] and RSA. In addition to data security events, Hyppönen has delivered talks at general-interest events, such as TED, TEDx, DLD, SXSW and Google Zeitgeist. He's also spoken at various military events, including AFCEA events and the NATO CCD COE's ICCC. Hyppönen is a reserve officer in the Finnish Army.[9]

Hyppönen has been a member of the advisory board of IMPACT (International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats) since 2007 together with Yevgeny Kaspersky, Dr. Hamadoun Touré, Professor Fred Piper and John Thompson.[10]

Hyppönen is a columnist for BetaNews and Wired.[11] He has also written on his research for CNN.

In 2011, he was ranked 61st in Foreign Policy‍ '​s Top 100 Global Thinkers report.[12]

The two greatest tools of our time have been turned into government surveillance tools. I'm talking about the mobile phone and the internet. George Orwell was an optimist.
—Hyppönen on the PRISM surveillance in 2013[13]

Computer security history

Hyppönen made international news in 2011[14][15] when he tracked down and visited the authors of the first PC virus in history, Brain.A. Hyppönen produced a documentary of the event. The documentary was published on YouTube.[16]

Hyppönen has also been documenting the rise of mobile phone malware since the first smartphone viruses were found.[17]

The blog "News from the Lab", started by Hyppönen in 2004 was the first blog from any antivirus company.

Controversy on Twitter

Hyppönen has been very active on Twitter.[18] However, his account was banned by Twitter administrators in October 2009 and all his followers were removed.[19] This was because Hyppönen had posted a Tweet with a link to a phishing site as a warning to other users. After several days, he regained access to his account.[20] Despite these problems, Hyppönen was credited by Twitter for improving Twitter's security.[21]

See also

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mikko Hyppönen.