Hottie of the Week: Joanna Rutkowska

I was reading eWeek, as I’m often wont to do when I came across something very interesting. Being a Mac user, I’m interested in rootkits and the like so I can keep up on the latest ways to be smug to PC users, so it caught my eye when I read about something revealed at the Black Hat Conference by a Polish security specialist. It was malicious code that could run from a system’s firmware. This is a bad thing. Wiping and reimaging a drive won’t get rid of the code like normal bad shit, letting it get back into the system. Also, the only way to track the bad shit down is to explore the contents of memory, but to keep the code from doing it’s mojo you have to restart, clearing the contents of memory. So basically, this malicious code can bone you. That’s impressive and all, but what impressed me more was the fact that this wasn’t some pallid, deathly thin nerd in a black Invader Zim t-shirt, but in actuality a very attractive woman. Wha wha?

Joanna Rutkowska is a security specialist for COSEINC, a Singapore-based IT company. She has long been interested in the inner workings of operating systems, and has been involved in Linux kernel programming. She now works on dectecting and developing stealth exploits that can attack XP and Vista via rootkits, network backdoors and covert channels. You can check out Rutkowska’s work at Invisible Things.

(Photo courtesy of Hackinthebox.org)

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