Apple Hires Former OLPC Security Guru

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Krstic began his job at Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple on Monday. In his new role, Krstic will work on core security and shore up security infrastructure to prevent further malicious attacks targeting the Mac operating system.

During his stint as security director for OLPC, a nonprofit aimed at building $100 laptops for millions of children in developing countries, Krstic created the Bitfrost security application, a secure system that wouldn't require tech support and continual security updates.

The Bitfrost system was designed to sequester all of the computer's programs in a separate virtual operating system, which prevents malware from damaging the computer, stealing files or spying on the user, and ultimately renders viruses unable to execute malicious code on their hosts.

Before OLPC, Krstic served as director of research at the medical informatics laboratory of a European children's hospital, where he worked on infrastructure and security problems in wide-scale digital health care. He also co-authored "Official Ubuntu Linux Book," and consulted on security and architecture matters for major Web sites. Krstic left OLPC about a year ago.

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"I have -- at long last -- found my new adventure," Krstic said in a blog post. "After a great deal of deliberation, I moved to California and joined the local fruit vendor."

Krstic's hiring at Apple comes at a good time. In recent months, the Mac OS X platform has been targeted in a series of malware attacks. Two variations of the iServices Trojan, iServices.A and iServices.B, targeted Mac OS X via pirated copies of Apple's productivity suite iWorks and Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Mac that were distributed on BitTorrent and other file sharing sites.

Additionally, Apple issued a giant security update Tuesday containing almost 50 security fixes for numerous critical vulnerabilities affecting Mac OS X components and its Safari Web browser.

Numerous security experts anticipate that malware authors will launch attacks increasingly directed at the Mac OS as the company's market share increases.