Gutted to hear the news over the weekend that Dan Kaminsky has suddenly died at 42

(www.theregister.com)

Though Kaminsky rose to fame in 2008 for identifying a critical design weakness in the internet's infrastructure – and worked in secret with software developers to mitigate the issue before it could be easily exploited – he had worked behind the scenes in the infosec world for at least the past two decades.

When your Register hack asked Kaminsky why he hadn't gone to the dark side and used the flaw to become immensely wealthy – either by exploiting it to hijack millions of netizens' web traffic, or by selling details of it to the highest bidders – he said not only would that have been morally wrong, he didn't want his mom to have to visit him in prison.

He did some great things and saved the internet in a few occasions. A huge loss.