Eugene H Spafford

There’s a pernicious cycle in cybersecurity that has repeated for decades. Products are released before they are properly secured — security-by-design principles are skipped — leaving security teams to manage the consequences. The general attitude is “We’ll fix it with a patch,” or “It will get fixed in the next release.” Despite the obvious failings of this approach, the practice continues and is getting worse.

“Theoretical ideas have a real-life impact,” said Michael Oser Rabin in a 2009 interview, and he spent nearly seven decades proving it. He died on April 14, 2026, in Jerusalem, Israel, at the age of 94. An ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate, his contributions touch nearly every aspect of computing. Michael Rabin was born September 1, 1931 in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland).

Networking was David J. Farber’s life’s work. Farber helped design the first electronic switching system (ESS-1) during his 11-year career at Bell Laboratories (1956-1967).