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DNS genius and ICANN key-holder Dan Kaminsky dies at 42

Kevin Murphy, April 27, 2021, 10:04:19 (UTC), Domain Tech

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky, best known for uncovering the so-called “Kaminsky Bug” DNS vulnerability, has reportedly died at the age of 42.

It has been widely reported that Kaminsky’s niece confirmed his death from serious complications from his longstanding diabetes.

On Twitter, she rebutted emerging conspiracy theories that his death was linked to the coronavirus vaccine, which he had received April 12, saying her uncle would “laugh” at such views.

During his career as a white-hat hacker, Kaminsky worked for companies including Cisco, Avaya, and IOActive.

He occasionally spoke at ICANN meetings on security issues, and was since 2010 one of IANA’s seven Recovery Key Share Holders, individuals trusted to hold part of a cryptographic key that would be used to reboot root zone DNSSEC in the case of a massive disaster.

But he was best known for his 2008 discovery of a fundamental flaw in the DNS protocol that allowed cache poisoning, and therefore serious man-in-the middle attacks, across millions of name servers worldwide. He worked with DNS software vendors in private to help them with their patches before the problem was publicly disclosed.

His discoveries led in part to the ongoing push for DNSSEC deployment across the internet.

The vulnerability received widespread attention, even in the mainstream media, and quickly came to bear his name.

For me, my standout memory of Kaminsky is one of his series of annual “Black Ops” talks, at the Defcon 12 conference in Las Vegas in 2004, during which he demonstrated to a rapt audience of hackers how it was possible to stream live radio by caching small chunks of audio data in the TXT fields of DNS records and using DNS queries to quickly retrieve and play them in sequence.

As well as being a bit of a DNS genius, he knew how to work a stage: the crowd went mental and I grabbed him for an interview soon after his talk was over.

His death at such a young age is a big loss for the security community.

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