At the 2025 Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, industry leader Mikko Hyppönen shared the latest evolution in his career. After spending over 35 years battling malware, Hyppönen is now dedicating his efforts to developing defense technologies against "killer" drones.
Hyppönen is renowned for his deep expertise in the field. Since the late 1980s, he has been on the front lines of the fight against computer viruses, worms, and Trojans—a time when cyber threats were primarily spread via floppy disks and the term "malware" had yet to enter the common lexicon.
From "Cyber Tetris" to Physical Defense
During his keynote, Hyppönen likened cybersecurity to a game of "Cyber Tetris." He noted that in this field, successful defense is often defined by "nothing happening," making its results inherently invisible: "Your successes disappear, while your failures just keep piling up."
This profound understanding of threat mitigation has driven him to shift his focus from virtual code-based combat to physical drone defense. As drone technology advances, the potential security risks have become increasingly apparent, forcing the security industry to rethink the boundaries of defense.
Hyppönen believes that while the form of threats has evolved from early disk-based viruses to modern, sophisticated attacks, the core logic of the defender remains unchanged. By applying decades of anti-virus experience to drone security, he aims to build systems capable of accurately identifying and neutralizing unauthorized drone operations to meet the escalating challenges of physical security.
