100 Top Global Thinkers of 2012

By: Foreign Policy

#40: Eugene Kaspersky

Boasting hundreds of millions of customers for his company's anti-virus software, Eugene Kaspersky is one of the leading global authorities on cybersecurity. So when he warned executives at a technology conference this spring that "cyberweapons are the most dangerous innovation of this century," the tech world took notice.

After all, Kaspersky was among the first to publicly document the state-sponsored use of cyberweapons, signaling the advent of a new era of war. His company, Kaspersky Lab, alerted the world to the danger posed by the Stuxnet worm -- reportedly developed by the U.S. and Israeli governments -- that attacked the Iranian nuclear program before spilling out into the wider web, as well as the Flame virus that infected thousands of computers, mostly in the Middle East. He has also provocatively called for Internet users to be issued online virtual "passports" that would work like driver's licenses in the offline world.

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