The Genius

The Man Who Holds the Future of the Internet in His Hands

It took years for the Internet to reach its first 100 computers. Today, 100 new ones join each second. And running deep within the silicon souls of most of these machines is the work of a technical wizard of remarkable power, a man described as a genius and a bully, a spiritual leader and a benevolent dictator.

Linus Torvalds - who in person could be mistaken for just another a paunchy, middle-aged suburban dad who happens to have a curiously large collection of stuffed penguin dolls - looms over the future of computing much as Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs loom over its past and present. For Linux, the operating system that Torvalds created and named after himself, has come to dominate the exploding online world, making it more popular overall than rivals from Microsoft or Apple.

"Linus doesn't take security seriously, it's yet another concern in his mind, and he's surrounded himself with people who share those views," said Daniel Micay, a Toronto-based security researcher whose company, Copperhead, is developing a hardened version of the Android mobile operating system, which is based on Linux.