If you are of a certain age — an age where you may have spent a good bit of your time online using Myspace — you may recall an incident with the Samy worm, which in 2005 spread through Myspace so quickly and uncontrollably that they had to temporarily shut the service down to regain control. It was, by all accounts, a prank that got out of hand, but the authorities were not amused, and Samy Kamkar, who wrote the worm, was eventually sentenced to probation, community service, and a hefty fine.

Since then, Samy Kamkar has set his sights on security research, with a specific focus on open source software. We caught up with Samy at Recorded Future’s RFUN: Predict 2019 conference in Washington, D.C., where he was delivering one of the keynote presentations.