A passion for turning the IT world upside down

Daniel Gruss is part of the team that caused chaos in the IT world with the discovery of the system loopholes Spectre and Meltdown. Few people thought he was career material - but he won through. It was the night of the 3rd of January 2018 when the day-to-day life of Daniel Gruss, Michael Schwarz and Moritz Lipp and that of their doctoral supervisor Stefan Mangard abruptly changed for ever from the ground up. After days of speculation in blogs, on social media and in the press one thing was sure: the discovery of the Spectre and Meltdown computer attacks put the IT world into shock and propelled the international team that had discovered the loopholes - including the four researchers from Graz - all of a sudden into the limelight. Malware like this the IT world had not seen before, and many weeks went by during which the big chip producers were searching intensively for solutions. Weeks in which Gruss, Schwarz, Lipp and Mangard had to answer The 32-year-old has a stash of chocolate bars next to his screen - energy for intensive working days. The screen itself is all in black.