Interview with Kirill Levchenko
;login: Enters a New Phase of Its Evolution
For over 20 years, ;login: has been a print magazine with a digital version; in the two decades previous, it was USENIX’s newsletter, UNIX News. Since its inception 45 years ago, it has served as a medium through which the USENIX community learns about useful tools, research, and events from one another. Beginning in 2021, ;login: will no longer be the formally published print magazine as we’ve known it most recently, but rather reimagined as a digital publication with increased opportunities for interactivity among authors and readers.
Since USENIX became an open access publisher of papers in 2008, ;login: has remained our only content behind a membership paywall. In keeping with our commitment to open access, all ;login: content will be open to everyone when we make this change. However, only USENIX members at the sustainer level or higher, as well as student members, will have exclusive access to the interactivity options. Rik Farrow, the current editor of the magazine, will continue to provide leadership for the overall content offered in ;login:, which will be released via our website on a regular basis throughout the year.
As we plan to launch this new format, we are forming an editorial committee of volunteers from throughout the USENIX community to curate content, meaning that this will be a formally peer-reviewed publication. This new model will increase opportunities for the community to contribute to ;login: and engage with its content. In addition to written articles, we are open to other ideas of what you might want to experience.
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As I read the Triton paper in the CSET '19 workshop, I found myself wanting to talk to some of the folks who had been working on this project. The recent software and documentation issues with Boeing's 737 Max that have led to the deaths of over 300 people provided some additional impetus. Karl Koscher, a member of the project, had written for ;login: before about the automotive CAN bus, so I asked him for recommendations about who he thought I should talk to.
Karl suggested Kirill Levchenko. I don’t recall ever meeting Kirill, but I'd certainly heard of him through various papers published by a large group of primarily West Coast researchers related to tracking Internet crime, work on hacking cars, and other topics.
As we worked on the interview, Kirill reminded me that the Triton Project was a collaboration of many people, something you can see right away by looking at the CSET paper. Still, I found myself wanting to talk to Kirill, as I knew little about him beyond his published works.