Alisa Shevchenko, also known as Alisa Esage Шевченко, is a Russian hacker, recognised for working with companies to find vulnerabilities in their systems. A self-described “offensive security researcher,” a 2014 profile in National Geographic says of Shevchenko: 'she was more drawn to hacking than programming.' After dropping out of school she worked as a virus analytics expert for Kaspersky Labs for five years. In 2009, she founded the company Esage Labs, later known as ZOR Security Shevchenko's company Цои Security was placed on a list of US sanctioned agents after being accused of "helping Vladimir Putin bid to 2016 United States election interference by Russia|swing the election for Trump". Regarding White House accusations, Shevchenko stated on the record that authorities either misinterpreted facts or were deceived.
Achievements
Shevchenko was the winner of the PhDays IV, Critical Infrastructure Attack contest, successfully hacking a fake smart city and detecting several zero-day vulnerabilities in Indusoft Web Studio 7.1 by Schneider Electric. Alisa was also awarded the Zero Day Initiative, then owned by U.S. tech giant HP, for uncovering two vulnerabilities in Microsoft products in 2014. Her work has been featured in security industry publication virus BULLETIN.
Motivation and personality
Regarding her driving motivations, Alisa Shevchenko has said: "It's kinda ironic that I am still aspiring to inspire women, an obvious anti-hero", and "I wonder what @google is doing as a government-"ltd" global player, while some big gov'ts are clashing in the absurdity show".
Connections
Private security firm Wapack Labs, part of the corporate/cyber intelligence sharing community Red Sky Alliance, claim a former employee of Shevchenko company Цои Security was responsible for the BlackEnergy virus. The BlackEnergy virus has been used against targets in Georgia and Ukraine, prior to Russian invasions of these nations. Poland and Belgium have also been targeted by the malware. Attacks using the BlackEnergy virus and other malware thought to have been created by the same person or persons, or by connected persons, have been linked using the security services codename Sandworm. Connections have been made on Instagram between Shevchenko and software industry developer Peter David Carter
