Every claim on this site, and where to check it

Munir Kotadia, the person behind this site

• LinkedIn profile: career history and recommendations from clients and colleagues
• Million Years In Tech: my Substack

Reporter at ZDNet UK from 1998, then Chief Reporter for IT Week

• ZDNet author page: ZDNet's own bio (joined ZDNet UK in 1998, Chief Reporter for IT Week, Senior News Reporter for ZDNet UK, both awards) and my article archive, from March 1998 to May 2013
• ZDNet Australia team page

Stories on CNET News.com

• "Gates predicts death of the password", CNET, 25 February 2004 (also on ZDNet Australia)
• That story is cited as a reference, with my byline, in Wikipedia's Passwordless authentication article

Computer viruses and cybercrime, from 1998

• The ZDNet archive has my coverage of Blaster, Sobig, Bagle, Netsky, MyDoom, Sasser, Zotob, Sober and Slammer as they broke, 2003 to 2005. Earlier coverage, from 1998 to 2002, was mostly in IT Week and is no longer online.
• "Bulk of year's PC infections pinned to one man": my CNET News.com story on Sven Jaschan, the 18-year-old author of Netsky and Sasser, republished in full by Wired, 2 August 2004
• The Aaron Caffrey trial (2003), in which a British teenager accused of attacking the Port of Houston's computers was acquitted after blaming a Trojan horse: my reports, including "The Case of the Trojan Wookie" (ZDNet UK), are the first footnote of the leading US law paper on the "Trojan horse defence" (see Cited by others, below)

Editor, ZDNet Australia, covering cyber security

• ZDNet Australia team page
• "Is Google sharing your information with US govt?", ZDNet, 18 March 2008, under my byline: I asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt, during his visit to Sydney, whether Google would admit to sharing user data with the US government. The article includes the video, and you can hear me asking the question.
• "Up in cyber arms: AusCERT 2012": video interview with Mikko Hypponen, ZDNet Australia, 2012
• AusCERT, Australia's main security conference, almost every year from 2005 to 2014; linux.conf.au in 2007 and 2008; the RSA Conference
• An interview series with the CIOs of Australia's Department of Defence, Centrelink, the Australian Taxation Office, Customs, Optus, Wotif and PwC, all in the ZDNet archive

Regular news guest on the Risky Business security podcast, from 2007

• I took over the ZDNet Australia security beat from Patrick Gray when I moved to Sydney in 2004. When he launched Risky Business in 2007, I joined him most weeks to go through the security news, for at least the show's first year.
• Risky Business #2 (2007): my first appearance, on the week's bug disclosures
• Show archive pages listing my weekly news segments: episodes 23 to 30 (2007) and episodes 88 to 94 (2008)

iTnews, full time and then freelance (2009 to 2014)

• iTnews author page: about 140 articles, 2009 to 2014, on security, telcos and the NBN
• "AWS urges developers to scrub GitHub of secret keys", iTnews, March 2014
• TechPartner News author page (iTnews group), with a bio listing both awards

ZDNet IT Priorities: a video tour of CIO roundtables in five countries

• "Five countries, one cloud: IT Priorities round-up", ZDNet, 26 September 2010, under my byline: the team ran CIO roundtables in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, India and Taiwan, visiting all five countries to hear what local CIOs were dealing with

Freelance writing for InnovationAus (2024 to 2025)

• "The growing impact of SaaS on shared services"
• "Cloud use matures but guardrails still missing"
• "Esper aims high with low-cost hyperspectral imaging"

Sky News, 1996 to 1998

Producer, reporter and researcher on the team that launched .tv, and on Chips With Everything. This was before most TV work went online, so the best record is my LinkedIn profile.

Republished, syndicated and broadcast

• Wired, 2 August 2004: my CNET story on the Netsky and Sasser author, republished in full under my byline
• The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 February 2004: "New version of Mydoom to launch new attack", as cited by the Australian Institute of Criminology
• "Sasser variant suggests copycat", The Globe and Mail, May 2004, under my byline
• CRN Australia author page
• Risky Business podcast #42, December 2007: guest as ZDNet Australia editor, discussing the week's security news
• Muck Rack journalist profile, listing my ZDNet work and the 2006 Consensus award
• My iTnews bio also lists the Sky News years and guest appearances on BBC Radio 5 Live, the BBC World Service and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google (2008)

• "Is Google sharing your information with US govt?", ZDNet, 18 March 2008, with video

Scott Charney, Microsoft's security chief (2008)

• "Scott Charney: Microsoft's security chief reveals all", ZDNet Australia, 26 May 2008, under my byline: an exclusive eight-part video interview on Microsoft's approach to security

Bruce Schneier, security technologist (2008)

• "Schneier: Perceptions of security are flawed", ZDNet Australia, 18 February 2008: Schneier told ZDNet Australia at linux.conf.au why our sense of security is so often wrong
• "ROI figures are meaningless: Bruce Schneier", ZDNet Australia, 17 February 2008, video interview

Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux (2007 and 2008)

• "Video: Torvalds on DRM and GPLv3", ZDNet Australia, January 2007: part one of a five-part video interview at linux.conf.au in Sydney
• "Torvalds: Linux ready to go green", ZDNet Australia, 31 January 2008, under my byline, from an interview at linux.conf.au in Melbourne

Ivan Krstić, then Director of Security Architecture, One Laptop Per Child; now Head of Security Engineering and Architecture, Apple (2007)

• "Is desktop security broken beyond repair?", ZDNet Australia, 29 May 2007: Krstić explained his view to me shortly after his AusCERT keynote

Eugene Kaspersky, founder of Kaspersky Lab (AusCERT, 2005)

• "Kaspersky welcomes Microsoft antivirus move", ZDNet Australia, 27 May 2005: from an interview with ZDNet Australia at the AusCERT security conference. I interviewed him at AusCERT several times.

Kevin Mitnick, hacker turned security consultant

• "Human firewall a crucial defence: Mitnick", ZDNet

Mitchell Baker, CEO, Mozilla (2007)

• "Mozilla CEO: Open source is no monster", ZDNet Australia, 4 May 2007: "a wide-ranging interview with ZDNet Australia"

Brian Snow, retired chief scientist, US National Security Agency (AusCERT 2008)

• "That isn't lovely code, it's an ugly monkey", ZDNet Australia, AusCERT 2008: Snow told ZDNet.com.au that software can be secure only if vendors overhaul how they build it

Dr Jan Hruska, co-founder, Sophos (2005)

• "Microsoft enterprise AV tool unlikely: Sophos", ZDNet Australia, 9 May 2005
• "Sophos founder: Mac viruses are spreading", ZDNet Australia

Mark Sunner, co-founder, MessageLabs (AusCERT 2007)

• "2007: How was it for security?", ZDNet Australia: video interview at AusCERT 2007

John Stewart, Chief Security Officer, Cisco (2005)

• "Cisco customers have a 'hygiene' problem", ZDNet Australia, 20 October 2005, under my byline: Stewart on getting customers to upgrade IOS after Michael Lynn's router-flaw disclosure

George Stathakopoulos, Director of Product Security, Microsoft (2004)

• "Microsoft hopes to extend patching cycle, eventually", ZDNet Australia, 17 November 2004, under my byline: Stathakopoulos on moving Windows from monthly patches to as long as six months, and his goal of an operating system that never needs patching

Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce (2003)

• "PeopleSoft 'like a sinking barge' – Salesforce.com chief", ZDNet UK, 12 November 2003, under my byline: Benioff told me why he thought the traditional CRM companies would sink

Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer, F-Secure (2012)

• "Up in cyber arms: AusCERT 2012", ZDNet Australia, video interview

Richard Thieme, security author and DEF CON speaker (2007)

• "Do aliens and God affect your security budget?", ZDNet Australia, 4 June 2007, under my byline: a video interview at AusCERT 2007

Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft (2004)

• "Gates predicts death of the password", CNET, 25 February 2004, from his RSA Conference keynote

Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce (2003)

• "Salesforce.com moves into custom application hosting", ZDNet, 11 November 2003, under my byline, from his keynote at the Salesforce user and developer conference in San Francisco

Law journals

• "The Trojan Horse Defense in Cybercrime Cases", Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal, volume 21: opens with my coverage of the Aaron Caffrey trial and cites four of my 2003 reports for ZDNet UK and Silicon.com. Also published as CERIAS Tech Report 2005-15, Purdue University.
• "Technological Self-Help and Equality in Cyberspace", Jennifer A. Chandler, McGill Law Journal (2010) 56:1, 39: cites three of my ZDNet and CNET stories on spam, phishing and hacking
• Texas Wesleyan Law Review, volume 16, issue 3: opens with my 2007 story "Google denies Street View has privacy issues"
• "The Trojan horse defence: a modern problem of digital evidence", Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review, volume 9 (2012): cites "The Case of the Trojan Wookie"

Economics, criminology and research

• "The Economics of Spam", Journal of Economic Perspectives, volume 26, number 3 (2012): cites my 2004 report on spammers using free porn to beat CAPTCHA tests
• "Hacking motives", High Tech Crime Brief, Australian Institute of Criminology (2005): cites two of my 2004 stories
• "Testing an Integrated Self-Control and Routine Activities Framework to Examine Malware Infection Victimization", Social Science Computer Review (SAGE, 2020): cites "Dating web sites spread malware not love" (2006)
• "Tackling cybercrime to unleash developing countries' digital potential", Pathways for Prosperity Commission, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford: cites my 2003 CNET report on spam from compromised PCs
• The Politics of Cyberconflict (Routledge): cites my 2005 ZDNet Australia report on security researchers and the law
• Springer (2025), on Android pattern locks: cites "Microsoft: Write down your passwords" (2005)
• Edith Cowan University: cites "Virus authors choosing to infect fewer computers" (2005)

Wikipedia

• Passwordless authentication cites "Gates predicts death of the password" (CNET and ZDNet, 2004)
• Microsoft v. MikeRoweSoft cites three of my ZDNet UK stories from January 2004, including "Microsoft: We took MikeRoweSoft too seriously", in which a Microsoft spokesperson told ZDNet UK the company had taken its trademark "a little too seriously"

Best Technology Columnist, Australian IT Journalism Awards, 2007

• Organiser's winners list (choose 2007). The awards are also known as the Lizzies; Sun Microsystems sponsored them at the time.

Best News Journalist, Consensus IT Writers Awards, 2006

• Organiser's results page: the 2006 table lists the win, for a series of anti-virus news reports for ZDNet Australia
• Two stories from the winning series: "Eighty percent of new malware defeats antivirus" (ZDNet Australia, 19 July 2006, under my byline), reporting AusCERT's warning that the most popular antivirus products missed around 80 percent of new malware, and my follow-up column "Why popular antivirus apps 'do not work'" (21 July 2006), on why the bestselling brands fared worst while a little-known one blocked around 90 percent
• The "Eighty percent" story was picked up by Neowin and Gigazine in Japan, and AusCERT's 80 percent figure was still being quoted by SecurityWeek years later

Words, pictures and video for technology companies, 2010 to today

• Case studies, customer videos and photography for Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, AWS Partner Network, WatchGuard, WithSecure and Snowflake: interviewing partners and customers, then delivering words, pictures and video to brand guidelines
• eLearning video for Coles; a promo video and photographs for CommsDay
• Thought leadership, whitepapers and case studies for Collective Content, a UK technology content agency
• Ghostwritten blogs and thought leadership for technology CEOs and executives
• Case studies, articles and customer videos published on AWS and other vendor sites without a byline
• In-house at a European networking vendor: website copy, datasheets, build guides, animated explainers and a sales-intelligence tool
• The quotes on the home page come from public recommendations on my LinkedIn profile, from Tony Hallett, Emily Baxter, Rory Allthorpe and Petroc Wilton, among others

Explainers, games and tools built for a European networking vendor in 2026

• Every piece is live on this site. All the work, described explains what each one is, what it looks like and how it works.
• Shown without the client's name or branding. Demos use invented or sample data.

My own product

• Whacky Weather: a live weather app I designed, built and run, made for Koh Phangan and working anywhere in the world