Robert Simmons is an independent malware researcher. With an expertise in building automated malware analysis systems based on open source tools, he has been tracking malware and phishing attacks and picking them apart for years. Robert has spoken on malware analysis at many of the top security conferences including DEFCON, HOPE, botconf, and DerbyCon among others. Robert also is a maintainer of plyara, a YARA rule parser written in pure python.

Robert, also known as Utkonos, has a background in biology, linguistics, and Russian area studies. He has lived extensively in Russia and Ukraine and has been known to swear profusely and constantly in Russian.