Ilfak Guilfanov

Ilfak Guilfanov is a Tatar-born software developer. In 1991 he began writing the Interactive Disassembler, IDA, which combined automatic analysis with interactive annotation and became the dominant tool for binary reverse engineering in malware analysis, vulnerability research, and software security.

Hex-Rays

In 2005 Guilfanov founded Hex-Rays in Belgium to develop IDA and, from 2007, the Hex-Rays decompiler, which reconstructs C-like pseudocode from machine code.

The WMF patch

On 31 December 2005, while the Windows Metafile vulnerability was being actively exploited and no vendor fix existed, Guilfanov published an unofficial patch. Security organizations including SANS recommended it until Microsoft shipped its own update on 5 January 2006, an unusual case of a third-party patch gaining broad endorsement.

Timeline

• 1966-03-15Born in Tatarstan.
• 1991Begins developing the Interactive Disassembler (IDA).
• 2005Founds Hex-Rays.
• 2005-12-31Releases an unofficial patch for the Windows WMF vulnerability.
• 2007Releases the Hex-Rays decompiler.