Tsutomu Shimomura

Shimomura was a founder of semiconductor company Neofocal Systems, and was CEO and CTO until 2016.

• Name — Tsutomu Shimomura • Born — 23 October 1964 • Birthplace — Nagoya, Japan • Known for — Catching Kevin Mitnick • Occupation — Computer programmer, physicist • Education — California Institute of Technology

Born in Japan, Shimomura is the son of Osamu Shimomura, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended Princeton High School. At Caltech he studied under Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. After Caltech, he went on to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he continued his hands-on education in the position of staff physicist with Brosl Hasslacher and others on subjects such as lattice gas automata. In 1989, he became a research scientist in computational physics at the University of California, San Diego, and senior fellow at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Shimomura also became a noted computer security expert, working for the National Security Agency. In 1992, he testified before Congress on issues regarding the privacy and security (or lack thereof) on cellular telephones. Author Bruce Sterling described his first meeting with Shimomura in the documentary Freedom Downtime: It was in front of Congress, and I was testifying to a Congressional subcommittee. And here was this guy in sandals and, like, ragged-ass cutoffs, and the rest of us were done up in ties [...] giving our best sort of 'yes, we're in front of Congress' thing and Shimomura is there in this surfer gear. He is best known for events in 1995, when he assisted with tracking down the computer hacker Kevin Mitnick. In that year Shimomura also received prank calls which popularized the phrase "My kung fu is stronger than yours", equating it with hacking. Shimomura and journalist John Markoff wrote a book, Takedown, about the pursuit, and the book was later adapted into a movie with a very similar name, Track Down. Shimomura, himself, appeared in a brief cameo in the movie. Shimomura worked for Sun Microsystems during the late 1990s. Shimomura was a founder of privately held fabless semiconductor company Neofocal Systems, and was CEO and CTO until 2016.

• Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw—By the Man Who Did It (with John Markoff), 1996, Hyperion Books. • French title: Cybertraque, 1998, • Dutch title: De klopjacht, 1996, • German Title: Data Zone - Die Hackerjagd im Internet, 1996, • Spanish Title: Takedown. Persecución y captura de Kevin Mitnick, el forajido informático más buscado de Norteamérica. Una crónica escrita por el hombre que lo capturó., 1997, • "Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security", January 1996 (co-authors: Shimomura, Bruce Schneier, Ronald L. Rivest, Matt Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, Eric Thompson, Michael Wiener) (pdf)

The following works and productions are recorded by name or by count.