Biography:Ýmir Vigfússon

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Short description: Icelandic computer programmer
Ymir Vigfusson
Ymir Vigfusson.jpg
Born
Ýmir Vigfússon

January 1984
Reykjavík, Iceland
NationalityIcelandic
Alma materUniversity of Iceland (B.S.)
Cornell University (Ph.D.)
Known forCybersecurity education
AwardsNSF CAREER
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisAffinity in Distributed Systems (2010)
Doctoral advisorKen Birman[1]
Websitewww.ymsir.com

Ymir Vigfusson is an Icelandic hacker, computer science professor, and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CTO of Keystrike, a cybersecurity company, and Associate Professor at Emory University, where he directs the Emory Simbiosys (Simulation, Systems, and Biology) lab.[2]

Cybersecurity career

In 2011, as Assistant Professor at Reykjavik University, Vigfusson created an annual hacking competition to raise national awareness of cybersecurity.[3] Unlike the customary jeopardy format, the competition departed from norms by having contestants hack and maintain access to one another’s workstations live on stage in front of an audience and cameras, while receiving points for maintaining backdoor access to other computers. Featuring a scoreboard, educational commentary by Vigfusson, and live music, the events were extensively covered by media in Iceland.[4][5][6][7] The international press also showed interest, including a reporter at Vocativ who asked Vigfusson to hack them live on air.[8] Using the contests as a model, Vigfusson incorporated competitive hacking into annual undergraduate courses on cybersecurity at both Reykjavik University and Emory University.[9]

In 2014, Vigfusson gave a talk at TEDxReykjavik titled simply “Why I teach people how to hack[10]”. The talk, arguing that learning cybersecurity through hacking was essential to understanding cyberdefense and also more fun, became a viral phenomenon that received over 1.8 million views.[11] Vigfusson was invited back in 2019, where, while wearing a balaclava, he delivered the talk “You should learn how to hack[12]” that received over 350,000 views. In the lectures and a later cybersecurity podcast,[13] Vigfusson revealed that he “grew up as a hacker”, having gotten his first job as a teenager at an ISP after notifying them that he had hacked their servers, and that he was among the first developers of format string exploits. He also claimed to have “stopped hacking after developing a moral compass” and that he has since been “seeking amends for [his] past”.

In 2013, Vigfusson co-founded Syndis,[14] a penetration testing company and consultancy based in Reykjavík, and stayed on its Board of Directors until the company was acquired by Origo hf. in 2021. Syndis became the de-facto cybersecurity company in Iceland and received multiple IT accolades during the period.[15][16][17] In 2018, he co-founded Adversary, an online platform for cybersecurity education, where developers are placed in the shoes of hackers.[18] Adversary was acquired by Secure Code Warrior in 2020.[19]

In 2023, Vigfusson co-founded Keystrike,[20] a company producing synonymous cybersecurity products that allow for secure remote access even when the user has been compromised, but without needing additional user input. The idea behind Keystrike received Emory University’s “Innovation of the Year” award.[21] Vigfusson and the founding team were invited to the prestigious Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator program in 2023 and secured angel[22] and pre-seed investment the same year.[23]

Research career

Vigfusson’s academic research spans the areas of distributed computer systems and data science, and includes paper awards from a range of scientific communities.[24] His work on distributed systems is focused on caching algorithms and distributed tracing systems.[25] In 2016, Vigfusson received the prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his project on “rethinking the cache abstraction”.[26] He is the co-inventor of SIEVE,[27] a cache eviction algorithm published in 2024 that is “very effective, and an extremely simple change on top of a basic FIFO queue.”.[28]

Vigfusson’s research in data science is primarily centered on computational epidemiology. Prior to COVID-19, he led a project,[29] published in PNAS, around using anonymous cellphone data to quantify epidemics,[30] “[demonstrating] deviations in the movements of influenza-infected members of the population that will likely impact disease transmission.”[31] He has also helped develop mathematical techniques for the CDC to quantify and disambiguate mixtures of malarial strains or antibiotic-resistant bacteria.[32]

External links

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ýmir Vigfússon at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ↑ "Emory Simbiosys Lab". https://simbiosys.mathcs.emory.edu/. 
  3. ↑ Hallur Már Hallsson (October 31, 2011). "Keppt í tölvuhakki". Morgunblaðið. https://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2011/10/31/keppt_i_tolvuhakki/. 
  4. ↑ "Besti tölvuhakkarinn" (in Icelandic). RÚV. October 31, 2011. https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/besti-tolvuhakkarinn. 
  5. ↑ "Hakkarakeppni HR í fullum gangi" (in Icelandic). Nörd Norðursins. October 2011. https://nordnordursins.is/2011/10/hakkarakeppni-hr-i-fullum-gangi/. 
  6. ↑ Haukur Viðar Alfreðsson (August 13, 2013). "Yngstur í hakkarakeppni" (in Icelandic). Vísir.is. https://www.visir.is/g/2013130839952/yngstur-i-hakkarakeppni. 
  7. ↑ "Sölvi Páll hakkari ársins" (in Icelandic). Morgunblaðið. September 2, 2013. https://www.mbl.is/frettir/taekni/2013/09/02/solvi_pall_hakkari_arsins/. 
  8. ↑ "Vocativ: Ice Phishing (video)". November 13, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsqRXvbc-mM. 
  9. ↑ Varun Gupta (November 15, 2017). "From Teen Hacker to Devoted Academic". The Emory Wheel. https://emorywheel.com/vigfusson/. 
  10. ↑ Ymir Vigfusson (May 17, 2014). "Why I Teach People How to Hack". TEDxReykjavik 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwJyKmCbOws. Retrieved January 2, 2024. 
  11. ↑ Alexander Elliott (October 9, 2019). "TEDxReykjavik Celebrates Ten Years". RÚV. https://www.ruv.is/english/tedx-reykjavik-celebrates-ten-years. 
  12. ↑ Ymir Vigfusson (April 21, 2020). "You Should Learn How to Hack". TEDxReykjavik 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaJtUCU004o. Retrieved January 2, 2024. 
  13. ↑ James Maude (December 29, 2023). "The Adventures of Alice and Bob: Episode 45: The Secure Shell Exploit and Kids Hacking ISPs" (Podcast). ProSeries Media.
  14. ↑ Syndis
  15. ↑ "UT-Sprotinn 2018" (in Icelandic). The Icelandic Computer Society. 2019. https://www.sky.is/index.php?id=1844:2019-ut-sprotinn. 
  16. ↑ Origo hf.. "Syndis Receives the 2022 Sky IT Award". https://www.origo.is/english/news/syndis-receives-the-2022-sky-it-award. 
  17. ↑ "Verðlaunahafi Upplýsingatækniverðlauna Ský 2022" (in Icelandic). The Icelandic Computer Society. 2022. https://www.sky.is/index.php/ut-verdlaunin/1991-2022-ut-verdlaun-sky. 
  18. ↑ Marta Schluneger (November 18, 2019). "Building and Nurturing a Cybersecurity Culture in Iceland and Beyond". https://startupiceland.com/2019/11/25/building-and-nurturing-a-cybersecurity-culture-in-iceland-and-beyond/. 
  19. ↑ Michelle Spinei (April 29, 2020). "Cybersecurity Education Platform Adversary Acquired by Secure Code Warrior". Northstack. https://www.northstack.is/cybersecurity-education-platform-adversary-acquired-by-secure-code-warrior/. 
  20. ↑ Keystrike
  21. ↑ Jessica Beach (April 11, 2022). "OTT Presents: The 2022 Annual Celebration Awardees". Emory University Office of Tech Transfer. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/techtransfer/2022/04/ott-presents-the-2022-annual-celebration-awardees/. 
  22. ↑ Michelle Spinei (July 13, 2023). "Keystrike secures pre-seed funding from Philippe Langlois, cybersecurity entrepreneur". Northstack. https://www.northstack.is/keystrike-secures-pre-seed-funding-from-philippe-langlois-cybersecurity-entrepreneur/. 
  23. ↑ Michelle Spinei (November 28, 2023). "Keystrike raises $1M pre-seed round". Northstack. https://www.northstack.is/keystike-raises/. 
  24. ↑ Ymir Vigfusson. "Curriculum Vitae". https://www.ymsir.com/CV.pdf. 
  25. ↑ Google Scholar profile
  26. ↑ National Science Foundation (February 27, 2020). "Award Abstract #1553579. CAREER: SentientCache: Rethinking the Cache Abstraction". https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1553579. 
  27. ↑ Zhang, Yazhou; Yang, Juncheng; Yue, Yao; Vigfusson, Ymir; Vinayak, Rashmi (2024). "SIEVE is Simpler than LRU: An Efficient Turn-Key Eviction Algorithm for Web Caches". Santa Clara, CA. https://junchengyang.com/publication/nsdi24-SIEVE.pdf. 
  28. ↑ Marc Brooker (December 15, 2023). "Why Aren’t We SIEVE-ing?". https://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/12/15/sieve.html. 
  29. ↑ Vigfusson, Ymir; Karlsson, Thorgeir A.; Onken, Derek; Song, Congzheng; Einarsson, Atli F.; Kishore, Nishant; Mitchell, Rebecca M.; Brooks-Pollock, Ellen et al. (2021). "Cell-phone traces reveal infection-associated behavioral change". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (6). doi:10.1073/pnas.2005241118. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2005241118. 
  30. ↑ Carol Clark (January 21, 2021). "Anonymous cell phone data can quantify behavioral changes for flu-like illnesses". Emory eScienceCommons. https://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2021/01/anonymous-cell-phone-data-can-quantify.html. 
  31. ↑ Bharti, Nita (2021). "Linking human behaviors and infectious diseases". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (11): e2101345118. doi:10.1073/pnas.2101345118. 
  32. ↑ Carol Clark (October 23, 2017). "CDC funds Emory project to automate analysis of mixed strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria". https://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2017/10/cdc-funds-emory-project-to-automate.html. 



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