The cybersecurity sector is mourning the passing of security expert Kelly Lum, also widely known by her Twitter handle, @aloria.
SummerCon, one of the many cybersecurity organizations to which Lum lent her expertise over the years, was one of the first to share the news about her death. “It is with profound sadness that we mourn the loss of out friend and mentor, @aloria,” the tweet from SummerCon said.
Lum was the director of information security at Service Channel, a position she held since 2019. She previously served an adjunct professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, where she shared her vast experience in application security with a new generation of cybersecurity professionals. Lum was regularly featured at cybersecurity conferences, including Black Hat, where she served as a member of the Black Hat Advisory Board and as the Defense Track lead.
In 2014 at Black Hat USA, Lum, who was then a security engineer with Tumblr, teamed up with Zach Lanier, then-senior security researcher at Duo Security, to disclose their findings on dangerous cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerabilities in four commercial data loss prevention (DLP) products.
Lum passed away “due to progressed critical illness, in a hospitalized setting surrounded by her family,” SummerCon tweeted.
Editor’s note:Lum was a respected expert source to Dark Reading and a friend to many. She will be deeply missed.
Dark Reading
