Interview with David Dittrich

I first met Dave Dittrich at USENIX Security in 2000. Dave had been working at University of Washington for many years by then and had made a name for himself with his analysis of malware installed on Internet-connected systems at the university.

I had learned about his work on distributed hacking tools, particularly the ones for carrying out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Someone within the NSA had kindly pointed me in that direction, and I had fortunately realized the potential impact and managed to get an article published days before Mafia Boy set off his big attack.