His Code Backs Up the World. Now the Internet Wants Him Flogged.

His code runs the backups on nearly every Linux server on Earth, and the sync algorithm he invented rides inside macOS, too. He is retired, and he would rather be out sailing.

Instead, his inbox keeps filling with security reports for rsync, the software he wrote three decades ago. Most of the reports are machine-generated noise. A few are real. He has to read each one to find out which.

So he picked up the same kind of tool that was burying him, and he turned it on the problem.

It worked...

But within days, the same people who depend on his code wanted him punished for how he'd done it.