Markus Jakobsson is a computer security researcher, entrepreneur and writer, whose work is focused on the issue of digital security.

Career

Markus Jakobsson is currently Chief Scientist at Artema Labs, a company with the mission of disrupting and improving the crypto and NFT markets. Prior to his current role, he has been Chief Scientist at ByteDance; Chief of Security and Data Analytics at Amber Solutions, and Chief Scientist at Agari. Prior to that, he was a senior director at Qualcomm as a result of Qualcomm acquiring FatSkunk in 2014; Jakobsson founded FatSkunk in 2009, and served as its CTO until the acquisition. Prior to his position at Qualcomm, Jakobsson has served as Principal Scientist of Consumer Security at PayPal, held positions as the Principal Scientist for

Palo Alto Research Center PARC (Palo Alto Research Center; formerly Xerox PARC) is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California. Founded in 1969 by Jacob E. "Jack" Goldman, chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, the company was originally a division of Xero ...

and RSA Security, and served as vice president of the International Financial Cryptography Association. Prior to these positions, he was a member of the Technical Staff at Bell Labs, and held a position at Xerox PARC. In addition, Jakobsson serves as an expert witness and is a member of the software and networking litigation group Harbor Labs. He has a background in higher education, having served as an associate professor at Indiana University where he was also a cybersecurity researcher and co-director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research. He has also served as an adjunct associate professor at New York University.

Companies founded and advisory positions

In, 2021, Jakobsson co-founded Artema Labs. In 2004, Jakobsson was one of the founders of the digital security company RavenWhite. The Silicon Valley company offers device identification technologies and other authentication solutions for businesses that pair customer identity with digital privacy. In 2006, he launched securitycartoon.com with Dr. Sukamol Srikwan. A website using comics to teach security awareness and understanding among the average internet user, it became the basis for the company Extricatus, which developed Fastwords, an online password creation system where users create secure passwords made of a string of everyday words in order to make them easy to remember. In 2009, Jakobsson co-founded Fatskunk, a company that targets malware that attacks wireless devices such as tablets and smartphones. He founded ZapFraud Inc in 2013. ZapFraud is an IP holding company with a portfolio related to targeted email attacks, including

phishing Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwar ...

and

business email compromise Email spoofing is the creation of email messages with a forged sender address. The term applies to email purporting to be from an address which is not actually the sender's; mail sent in reply to that address may bounce or be delivered to an unre ...

. Markus has served on the advisory boards for Metaforic, a VC-backed company that markets software that other developers can incorporate into their own for greater security, and Lifelock, an identity protection company. In addition, he is a visiting research fellow of the

Anti-Phishing Working Group The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is an international consortium that attempts to eliminate fraud and identity theft caused by phishing and related incidents It brings together businesses affected by phishing attacks: security products and ...

(APWG), an organization focused on reducing cybercrime.

Education

Jakobsson holds a PhD in computer science from the

University of California at San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

, as well as

master's degrees A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

from both the University of California at San Diego and

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion

Academic research

Jakobsson's early research publications were focused on

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

. Later research emphasis was aimed at understanding and preventing fraud. With

Filippo Menczer Filippo Menczer is an American and Italian professor of informatics and computer science who is the former director at the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, a research unit of the Indiana University School of Informatics, Computi ...

and two students, he also conducted live experiments on Internet users in order to determine the ways users were likely to fall victim to various forms on online fraud. His later research was focused toward mobile security and the detection of malware on mobile platforms. In a 1999 paper he, together with Ari Juels, coined the term "proof of work", a central concept in

cryptocurrencies A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank A bank is a financial i ...

such as

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

Personal life

He is the brother of Hampus Jakobsson, an investor and tech entrepreneur, and Andreas Jakobsson, a professor of mathematical statistics at

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion

Bibliography

Jakobsson is the author or editor of a series of books and studies dealing with the world of internet security and its practical applications for businesses and individual users. * ''Phishing and Countermeasures: Understanding the Increasing Problem of Electronic Identity Theft'', Markus Jakobsson, Steven Myers - Editors, Wiley-Interscience, 2006 * ''Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses'', Markus Jakobsson, Zulfikar Ramzan - Authors, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2008 * ''Towards Trustworthy Elections: New Directions in Electronic Voting (Lecture Notes in Computer Science / Security and Cryptology)'', David Chaum, Markus Jakobsson, Ronald L. Rivest, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Josh Benaloh, Miroslaw Kutylowski, Editors, Springer, 2010 * ''The Death of the Internet'', Markus Jakobsson - Editor, Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Pr, 2012 * ''Mobile Authentication: Problems and Solutions (SpringerBriefs in Computer Science)'', Markus Jakobsson, Author, Springer, 2012

References

External links

Jakobsson's homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jakobsson, Markus University of California, San Diego alumni Lund University alumni American male writers Living people Xerox people Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area Year of birth missing (living people)