Ben “bushing” Byer has passed away | Hacker News Reader

Ben “bushing” Byer has passed away

fail0verflow.com

118 pointsaxoltl22 comments

Ben was the first person I met in the flesh in the Bay Area (we knew each other beforehand via efnet and a mutual open source project). He was the most brilliant reverse engineer / security researcher I've ever met, on a completely different level. He was also the connecting fabric between a diaspora of friends spread across the Bay Area and the web.

Ben, you will be missed.

Wow. I've been following bushing's work for a while and this is very saddening to hear. If you haven't seen bushing & marcan's "Wii Fail" presentation, I recommend it. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z81BCko-UY

Wow! After seeing the video and that his real name is Ben Byer, I think I went to high school with him. He looks somewhat different, but the voice sounds right.

Wow, this hits me like a punch to the stomach. I worked with bushing on a number of projects over the years, and I've rarely met a nicer, smarter hacker. He'll be missed greatly.

I didn't know him before reading this, but I have followed and enjoyed fail0verflow's work. It is a very sad loss.

Edit: I actually realized who he is now, as I only knew of him by the name "bushing". A shame to see a great hacker go.

Sorry to hear that. Bushing was awesome. Many of my IRC friends in the Nintendo DS hacking scene knew him well.

These were the guys who found a crack in the PS3 encryption tower right ?

Also the guys who brought Linux to the PS4 couple of weeks ago.

Ben was also instrumental in the Wii hacks, played a role in several iOS jailbreaks, and helped me reverse engineer the Second Life protocol.

I met him when he was visiting Vancouver a few years ago and had exchanged e-mails with him a few times. It's really sad to see him pass away.

Very sad. Wish I could have met him IRL then.

So young, does anyone know why? Maybe that's a morbid question, and I am sorry for everyone's loss.

It says natural causes, so I feel that's enough to remove fears of anything self inflicted.

On another note, I'm saddened to hear about this. I was actually just thinking about him specifically and wondering what he was up to since I hadn't heard anything about his involvement in Fail0verflow lately.

This is fairly recent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A7V3GLWF6U

I agree, but I hadn't seen his name attached to the PS4 work, so I just kind of assumed he wasn't an active member of the team in the last little while.

I didn't think someone so young could die of "natural causes", but apparently even dying from the flu or sudden heart failure qualifies as a natural cause: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_natural_causes

Ooof. Terrifying.

DVT is also considered a natural cause, and if you sit all day, you're at a higher propensity to die from it: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/deepveinthrombosis.html

Developers really need to look after their health. Our sedentary lives are impacting our health:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11040932

Hopefully, we'll soon figure out ways to monitor and measure our health. Then dying from natural causes will never happen.

All "natural" means in this context is that the person died independent of the actions of self or others, its the "not manmade" definition. Had a friend go with an aneurysm at a little younger age. Its horrifying to have those nothing you could do scenarios. Hit me much worse than the overdoses, suicides, or car accidents, and I'm not really sure why.

Never knew the guy personally, but he was certainly one of my inspirations. RIP. :(

Wow. I only met him a few times, but I always hoped we would work together someday. He blew my mind talking about reversing.

RIP Ben, you will be missed by one and all.

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