Thank goodness for the white hatters

As the world reels from yet another zero-day exploit spare a thought for the good guys trying to stop them.

iTWire interviewed Ron Davidson, Head of Threat Intelligence and Research at Check Point Software Technologies. First, a bit about Ron – it is necessary background to see why he is where he is. 

Ron leads Check Point’s cyber research and intelligence activities, including malware and vulnerability research, attacks and exploits analysis, as well as intelligence and
data-analytics operations. Ron has vast experience in network and cyber security, both in government (over 20 years of service in military and cyber intelligence) and in the private sector. Ron earned his B.Sc. in math and computer science from Tel Aviv University and Ph.D. in systems engineering from Stanford University. He is based in the company’s Tel-Aviv office.
When I ask Ron where he gets people to work in his ‘lab’ he laughs, “I think we counted 10 different professions but mostly they are young, self-taught, hackers who started by breaking (cheating) games and ended up catching the attention of national government or military in cyber service.”

“We recruit mainly out of government like the fabled NSA or Unit 8200 (Israeli Intelligence Corps unit responsible for collecting signal intelligence and code decryption). The key characteristic is patience – it can takes weeks or months to reverse engineer a hack and even longer to find a vulnerability,” he said.
“These people are motivated by the esteem they get from fellow researchers in the white hat community and the occasional bug bounty paid by software designers,” he said. “We all cooperate – inter and intra company – to keep the bad guys at bay.”