Kris Kaspersky

On February 10, 2017, Kris Kaspersky (Nikolay Likhachev) was critically injured in a hard landing after sky diving: "A sky diver who took a hard landing at Skydive DeLand remains in intensive care and is unable to communicate, a nurse at Halifax Health Medical Center said Monday. The sky diver, 40-year-old Nikolay Likhachev, suffered a compound fracture to his left leg and a head injury, an incident report released Monday by DeLand police states. The report states that Likhachev had completed 200 jumps, most of them at Skydive DeLand. Likhachev […] was injured Friday just before 9:15 a.m."

Kris Kaspersky was taken off life support and died from his wounds a week later on February 18, 2017.

"First time he came accompanied by his father – afterwards we began to publish his electrical engineering handbooks too. Kris was a good writer and conversation partner, and what is most important, had no quirks and excessive self-importance. His head worked incredibly well – he literally programmed in mind."

"Kris knows the answer to the main question concerning security – he knows the way it works, – says CEO of the company Christopher Jordan. – Besides, he can instantly give rise to a new idea." “His fame outside Russia is not exaggerated – says another Endeavor employee Alice Chang – he's a very well-known hacker, in the original sense of the word: a man who understands the very basics of how it works."

A total of 16 books had been published by 2008, including several translations into English. The books were dedicated to data protection and program optimization, computer virus and disassembling. Among these books there's also "Weatherlore Encyclopedia". Kris's interest lies in the field of computers and astronomy. Some of his articles and forum topics concern telescopes and observation of the starry sky. Along with the books Kris contributes to such magazines as "System administrator", "Byte", "Astrologer", "Hacker". The chief editor of "Hacker" magazine Nikita Kislitsin said:

Recently Kris Kaspersky expressed the idea to leave Russia. And, in order to increase the audience, to start writing books originally in English. Besides Kris Kaspersky had started his English blog. In late October 2008 he made a presentation on a fundamentally new holes in Intel processors, suitable for remote capture of multiple servers at a conference Hack in the Box in Kuala Lumpur.

Until recently Kris Kaspersky lived an isolated way of life in his native village. Since June 2008, he worked remotely on Endeavor Security, engaged in security of computers and networks. In 2009, McAfee acquired Endeavor Security.

Since 2008 Kris has been living and working in the United States. He worked for Check Point as a security expert.

The first article written by Kris was published when he was still in school. It was published by "Astrologer” magazine, and the article itself was devoted to astronomy. In 1998 Kris began to contribute actively to conferences of FidoNet RU.HACKER. Dmitry Sadchenko noted his posts and arranged him a meeting with the representatives of publishing house "Solon-Press". In 1999 "Solon-Press" published the first book of Kris Kaspersky "Technique and philosophy of hacker attacks" with 50 000 rubles of author's fee. Desktop publisher specialist Sergey Tarasov recalls:

Kris Kaspersky (born Nikolay Likhachev, November 2, 1976 – February 18, 2017) was a Russian hacker, writer and IT security researcher.

Kris Kaspersky was born on November 2, 1976 in the village of Uspenskoye, Krasnodar Krai, and at birth was named Nikolay. Being just a few weeks old he suffered a brain stroke, which came as a result of injection of calcium chloride, mistakenly made by a doctor. Brain tissue was partly damaged leading to minor autism. At the age of seven he made his first working radio. While studying at the elementary school he owned his first computer – Pravetz 8D, Bulgarian clone of British Oric Atmos with the documentation in Bulgarian language. The computer required connection to a tape recorder and a color TV set. For this computer Nikolay developed his first computer game.