The human, the ferret & the dog
Vulnerability research and exploit development by day. The rest of the time belongs to a ferret named Timosha and an Akita named Aki.
Small, sociable, incorrigibly curious
Ferrets (Mustela putorius furo) are little, intensely social and fully domesticated mustelids that have shared human homes for well over two thousand years. Playful and affectionate, they bond closely with their people and with each other, sleep through much of the day, and turn the rest of it into mischief.
Their kin have charmed us for centuries: the sleek white animal in Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine (c. 1489–1490) is an ermine — a stoat in its winter coat and a close cousin of the ferret — held as a symbol of grace and purity. Little has changed; they are still impossible not to adore.
An aboriginal breed with an imperial past
The Akita is an aboriginal Japanese breed — one of the native Nihon-ken — shaped over centuries in the snowy mountains of Akita Prefecture in northern Japan. Powerful, dignified and famously loyal, it was long a dog of the aristocracy: historically prized by nobility and tied to the Japanese imperial family, with ownership at times reserved for the elite.
The proofs are in the record. In 1931 Japan recognised the breed’s cultural importance by designating the Akita a national natural monument; and the world came to know its devotion through Hachikō, who waited at Shibuya Station for his owner for nearly ten years.