In memory of John McAfee

An unpublished portrait of the entrepreneur, written by those who knew him closely: from the exclusive on the race to the White House to the most armored bedroom in America

John McAfee (INSTARimages.com/Ipa) John McAfee is gone. He apparently committed suicide in the Barcelona prison where he was being held after hearing the news of his extradition to the United States. It happened. And it wasn't supposed to happen. As I write this, I realize that I am only calling him John. I have always called him John or Johnny, like one of his many nicknames, JohnnyBeGood, in which he appeared on the various means of communication, regularly encrypted, that we used to communicate. I have called him this for at least ten years, since that time when, starting with a "Dear Mr. McAfee, I would like to ...", I asked him for an interview for a Spanish magazine. It was the first time my life crossed paths with him. The beginning of many stories, interviews, night chats, video calls, phone calls. John had quickly become a friend.

A privilege, his friendship, which allowed me to ask him for a piece for the first quarterly issue of Wired in 2015 in which John, a staunch champion of freedom, and therefore of privacy, shot zero on the whole system Internet surveillance, even saying that the Chinese were inserting backdoors into the chips of their equipment, and that those chips were used in Pentagon systems. Years later it turned out to be true. But what if John McAfee said it? Just a paranoia.

The power of paranoia

Paranoia. Paranoia is perhaps the least flattering term to circumscribe his figure, absolutely bigger than life, as the Anglo-Saxons say. There would be many others: genius, avant-garde, libertine, counter-current, rebellious, shrewd, crazy, charismatic, fascinating, visionary, lover of life. They would all be right but his strength was paranoia. It is thanks to paranoia that he invented the first antivirus in history, and it was thanks to the ability to inculcate it in the minds of others that he began to build his fortune. Since he - he told me - he went around with a van from companies to propose the floppy with his antivirus.

The first computer viruses had appeared, and he was there, as a man of Providence, to save the world from dark danger. The stroke of genius? He didn't sell the antivirus, the antivirus gave it away. He was selling updates for future viruses. A precursor. At first, the entrepreneurs didn't seem very interested, but since it was free, why not? At least it remains in the drawer. And instead the viruses suddenly arrived, and how they did. In California at one point they spawned like mushrooms. Cassandra McAfee had once again been right. Maybe with some help ... (eh, John?).

The passion for Skype

John was not really a code hacker, but a security expert, yes, and he knew all the techniques used from “spies”, as well as safer systems. But if you think of the Signal messaging app, recommended by Edward Snowden (the former contractor of the National security agency who unveiled US mass espionage), you are off the mark. He hated Signal, he said that when he used it his systems were compromised: "Isn't it safe? Not at all ". Among his favorites was the simple Skype.

The second interview for Wired came precisely because of a news story involving an Italian cybersecurity company, Hacking Team, with the breach that had caused the theft of all their information and passwords. Gig of files that spilled into the dark web, waters in which John happily wallowed like a tropical guppy and in which he would be able to find any file I asked him to. And there he was pulling out 12345 password files, pornographic nouns, proper names with the digits of the year of birth and even trivial passwords used by alleged security experts. With lots of healthy enjoyment: an excellent opportunity for a libertine like him to shovel some manure on spies accused of providing surveillance systems to countries. After all, it is no mystery that among our companies there are also those who supply those systems to dictatorial governments, including those probably used by the Egyptian services to monitor and track down Giulio Regeni.

The dream of the White House

"I give you the exclusivity! ". These were the first words that John's smiley face exclaimed in a video call on Skype after throwing me out of bed in 2015.

“Do you want her? ”

“ Exclusive of what? ”

“ I am running for the future president of the United States! ”

“… come on, John…. what about .. ”

It was true. That madman had really run for the presidency of the most powerful country in the world. A country that in its most important government agencies - CIA, FBI, NSA, Dea - among other things hated it or at least despised it, returning its sweet appreciation spouted almost daily on tweets, posts, interviews. And here he is in the car, happy as a child, going with his entourage to his "headquarters" to prepare for the rise to power.

“Then when I'm elected, I want you here with me.”

“Ok John…”.

Needless to say, he will never be elected, but his television appearances they were the most hilarious an American political campaign I have ever seen in its history.

The most armored bedroom in America

After some projects gone wrong, including a meeting in London with a Russian with whom we should have planned a blockchain revolutionary or one of his autobiography written by George Jung, better known to the public for being the drug trafficker protagonist of Blow (another character I had the pleasure of meeting) just released from jail and which according to plans I should have translated into Italian, here comes a other Skype message.

The story, huge, was more or less like this: I should have gone there to interview him because someone wanted to kill him and he had to tell the world, but he didn't trust the many journalists. Of me, however, yes, so according to him I had to go. The reasons for wanting him dead? The story in Belize, which I am not telling here because you can find it everywhere. He had a Creole recording of Belitian government officials planning his assassination after he discovered massive government corruption.



The evidence of hit men on his heels ? "I found bags of cheese crackers in my garden, this is stuff Mexicans eat, they sent Los Zetas to watch me to get me out." Rather evident evidence for John, who had thought in the order of: building a vault, filling it with weapons, protecting it from ten Dobermans (or maybe they were pitbulls?), Hiring in addition to a large number of bodyguards also "interns" with task of writing down the number plates of all the cars that passed. "It is the most armored bedroom in America Ah Ah Ah! ", He told me.

I must say that I also tried for a while to do" the interview of the century ", but no newspaper seemed interested in paying me a trip to the United States to report that the Los Zetas wanted to take out McAfee. And that the evidence was in the cheese crackers. Whether it was the Belizians, the NSA, the Chinese, Google or some obscure group, John always lived in fear that someone would want to kill him, "collect". And he had some reason to believe it too, to be honest. In the end he really died, hanged.

I am content in here. I have friends.

The food is good. All is well.

Know that if I hang myself, a la Epstein, it will be no fault of mine.

- John McAfee (@officialmcafee) October 15, 2020



He had written months earlier that if he was found hanging dead like the financier Jeffrey Epstein, it would not have been suicide. Because according to him not even that of Epstein, in prison on charges of sexual abuse. It had been suicide. A provocation dictated by malaise or perhaps he had already planned everything and wanted to perpetuate his image as a dangerous outlaw of freedom? Hard to believe, so far in advance, while the timing on his last day was perfect: just before the confirmation of his extradition had arrived. Ending up in an American prison would have been the end for him. From there the suicide. This is the most obvious conclusion anyone would come to.

But John wasn't obvious, he was a visionary. He was paranoid. And so to remember him more worthily, paying homage, I will tell it as he would: "They killed me because I was revealing on tTwitter the methods by which governments insert agents in IT companies to write ghost codes on chips, backdoors that are used to spy on us, send to air systems, win wars. In the next post I would have revealed the methods to identify and unmask them. Fuck you assholes. "

Whether it happened this way or in the most obvious way, whether it was the NSA people, the Chinese, or the Mexicans eating cheese crackers, it doesn't matter: John is gone. I will miss him. I will miss his revelations, his insights, his advice, his amazing gimmicks, his clever humor, his ambitious projects, the chats about hacking, Cia, Nsa, dark web, bitcoin, sex, drugs ("I salts from bathroom are much better than LSD! "). I will miss a rare man, indeed unique.

I am sure he will continue to be talked about even after his death, indeed with his death: a Q has recently appeared in his Instagram profile, the Q by Q-Anon. But John did not love Donald Trump, unlike the followers of the mad conspiracy cult. He hated virtually the entire American political establishment, without great distinction. He was too free for politics, he would have been too free to be president. And it was especially so to stay in prison.

John McAfee's Skype screen But whoever wants to marry his wonderful and surreal paranoia can start from here: his Skype profile was accessed shortly after that he was dead.



Hi John, my friend.


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Topics

Cybersecurity Hacker Surveillance United States globalData.fldTopic = "Cybersecurity, Hacker, Surveillance, States United "

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