After Fighting Malware For Decades, This Cybersecurity Veteran Is Now Hacking Drones

Mikko Hyppönen is pacing backmost and distant connected nan stage, pinch his trademark acheronian blonde ponytail resting connected an impeccable teal suit. A seasoned speaker, he is trying to make an important constituent to a room afloat of chap hackers and information researchers astatine 1 of nan industry’s world yearly meet-ups.

“I often telephone this ‘cybersecurity Tetris’,” he tells nan assemblage pinch a superior face, reeling disconnected nan rules of nan classical video game. When you complete a full statement of bricks, nan statement vanishes, leaving nan remainder of nan bricks to autumn into a caller line.

“So your successes disappear, while your failures heap up,” he tells nan assemblage during his keynote astatine Black Hat successful Las Vegas successful 2025. “The situation we look arsenic cybersecurity group is that our activity is invisible… erstwhile you do your occupation perfectly, nan extremity consequence is that thing happens.”

Hyppönen’s work, however, has surely not been invisible. As 1 of nan industry’s longest serving cybersecurity figures, he has spent much than 35 years fighting malware. When he started successful nan precocious 1980s, nan word “malware” was still acold from mundane parlance; nan position alternatively were machine “virus” aliases “trojans.” The net was still thing fewer group had entree to, and immoderate viruses relied connected infecting computers pinch floppy disks. 

Since then, Hyppönen estimated he has analyzed thousands of different kinds of malware. And acknowledgment to his predominant talks astatine conferences each complete nan world, he has go 1 of nan astir recognizable faces and respected voices of nan cybersecurity community.

While Hyppönen has spent overmuch of his life trying to support malware from getting into places it is not expected to, now he is still doing overmuch of nan same, albeit a somewhat different tack: His caller situation is to protect group against drones. 

Hyppönen, who is Finnish, told maine during a caller question and reply that he lives astir 2 hours distant from Finland’s separator pinch Russia. An progressively dispute Russia and its 2022 full-scale penetration of Ukraine, wherever the mostly of deaths person reportedly travel from unmanned aerial attacks, person made Hyppönen judge he tin person renewed effect by fighting drones.

For Hyppönen, it is besides a matter of recognizing that while location are still long-standing problems to lick successful nan world of cybersecurity — malware is not going anyplace and location are plentifulness of caller problems connected nan sky — nan manufacture has made immense strides complete nan past 2 decades. An iPhone, Hyppönen brought up arsenic an example, is an highly unafraid device. The cybersecurity aspects of drone warfare, connected nan different hand, stay almost uncharted territory.

Image Credits:courtesy of Mikko Hypponen

From viruses and worms to malware and spyware…

Hyppönen started early successful cybersecurity by hacking video games during nan 1980s. His emotion for cybersecurity came from reverse engineering package to fig retired a measurement to region anti-piracy protections from a Commodore 64 games console. He learned to codification by processing escapade games, and sharpened his reverse engineering skills by analyzing malware astatine his first occupation astatine Finnish institution Data Fellows, which later became nan well-known antivirus shaper F-Secure. 

Since then, Hyppönen has been connected nan beforehand lines of nan conflict against malware, witnessing really it evolved.

In nan early years, microorganism writers developed their malicious codification often exclusively retired of passion and curiosity to spot what was imaginable pinch codification alone. While immoderate cyberespionage existed, hackers had yet to observe ways to monetize hacking by today’s standards, for illustration ransomware attacks. There was nary cryptocurrency to facilitate extortion, nor a criminal marketplace for stolen data.

Form.A, for example, was 1 of nan astir communal viruses successful nan early 1990s, which infected computers pinch a floppy disk. A type of that microorganism did not destruct thing — sometimes conscionable displaying a connection connected nan person’s screen, and that was it. But nan microorganism travelled astir nan world, including landing connected nan investigation stations astatine nan South Pole, Hyppönen told me.

Hyppönen recounted nan infamous ILOVEYOU virus, which he and his colleagues were nan first to observe successful 2000. ILOVEYOU was wormable, meaning it dispersed automatically from machine to computer. It arrived via email arsenic a matter file, purportedly a emotion letter. If nan target opened it, it would overwrite and corrupt immoderate files connected nan person’s computer, and past nonstop itself to each their contacts. 

The microorganism infected complete 10 cardinal Windows computers worldwide.

Malware has changed dramatically since then. Virtually nary 1 develops malware arsenic a hobby, and creating malicious package that self-replicates is practically a guarantee that it will get caught by cybersecurity defenders tin of neutralizing it quickly, and perchance catching its author.

No 1 does it for nan emotion of nan crippled anymore, according to Hyppönen. “The property of viruses is firmly down us,” he said. 

Seldom do we now spot self-spreading worms — pinch uncommon exceptions, specified arsenic nan destructive WannaCry ransomware attack by North Korea successful 2017; and nan NotPetya mass-hacking run launched by Russia later that year, which crippled overmuch of nan Ukrainian net and powerfulness grid. Now, malware is almost exclusively utilized by cybercriminals, spies, and mercenary spyware makers who create exploits for government-backed hacking and espionage. Those groups typically enactment successful nan shadows, and want to support their devices hidden to proceed their activities and to debar cybersecurity defenders aliases rule enforcement. 

The different differences coming are that nan cybersecurity manufacture is now estimated to beryllium worthy $250 billion. The manufacture has professionalized, successful portion arsenic a necessity, to conflict nan summation successful malware attacks. Defenders went from giving distant their package for free, to turning it into a paid work aliases product, said Hyppönen. 

Computers and newer inventions for illustration smartphones, which began to return disconnected during nan early 2000s, person go overmuch harder to hack. If nan devices to hack an iPhone aliases nan Chrome browser costs six-figures aliases moreover a fewer cardinal dollars, Hyppönen argued, this efficaciously makes an utilization truthful costly that only nan highly resourced, for illustration governments, tin usage them, alternatively than financially motivated cybercriminals. That’s a immense triumph for consumers, and for nan cybersecurity manufacture that’s a occupation good done.

Image Credits:courtesy of Mikko Hypponen

From fighting spies and criminals… to countering drones

In mid-2025, Hyppönen pivoted from cybersecurity to a different benignant of protect work. He became nan main investigation serviceman astatine Sensofusion, a Helsinki-based institution that develops an anti-drone strategy for rule enforcement agencies and nan military. 

Hyppönen told maine that was motivated to get into a processing caller manufacture because of what he saw happening successful Ukraine, a warfare defined by drones. As a Finnish citizen, who serves successful nan subject reserves (“I can’t show you what I do, but I tin show you that they don’t springiness maine a firearm because I’m overmuch much destructive pinch a keyboard,” he tells me), and pinch 2 grandfathers who fought nan Russians, Hyppönen is acutely alert of nan beingness of an force conscionable complete his country’s border.

“The business is very, very important to me,” he tells me. “It’s much meaningful to activity fighting against drones, not conscionable nan drones that we spot today, but besides nan drones of tomorrow,” he said. “We’re connected nan broadside of humans against machines, which sounds a small spot for illustration subject fiction, but that’s very concretely what we do.”

The cybersecurity and drone industries whitethorn look leagues isolated from 1 another, but location are clear parallels betwixt fighting malware and fighting drones, according to Hyppönen. To conflict malware, cybersecurity companies person travel up pinch mechanisms, known arsenic signatures, to place what is malware and what is not and past observe and artifact it. In nan lawsuit of drones, Hyppönen explained, defenses impact building systems that tin find and jam power drones, and by recognizing frequencies that are being utilized to power nan autonomous vehicles. 

Hyppönen explained that it’s imaginable to place and observe drones by signaling their power frequencies, known arsenic their IQ samples. 

“We observe nan protocol from location and build up signatures for detecting chartless drones,” he said. 

He besides explained that if you observe nan protocol and frequencies utilized to power nan drone, you tin besides effort to behaviour cyberattacks against it. You tin origin nan drone’s strategy to malfunction, and clang nan drone into nan ground. “So successful galore ways, these protocol level attacks are much, overmuch easier successful nan drone world because nan first measurement is nan past step,” Hyppönen said. “If you find a vulnerability, you’re done.”

The strategy successful fighting malware and fighting drones is not nan only point that hasn’t changed successful his life. The cat-and-mouse crippled of learning really to extremity a threat, and past nan force learning from that and devising caller ways to get astir defenses, and connected and on, is nan aforesaid successful nan world of drones. And then, there’s nan personality of nan enemy.  

“I spent a large portion of my profession fighting against Russian malware attacks,” he said. “Now I’m fighting Russian drone attacks.”