Rapid7 Intelligence receives the 2026 Péter Szőr Award for outstanding research

The threat analytics team at Rapid7 Labs has been honored with the cybersecurity industry's most prestigious award for outstanding technical research. This award directly confirms the highest level of expertise among the company's specialists and their contribution to protecting global infrastructure.

What is the Péter Szőr Award?

The Péter Szőr Award is presented annually by the independent organization Virus Bulletin in memory of Péter Szőr, a legendary researcher and author of foundational works on computer virus analysis. This award recognizes the most in-depth, rigorous, and actionable technical research in information security. Winning in this category demonstrates the ability not just to uncover vulnerabilities, but to thoroughly understand their architecture, exploitation tradecraft, and real-world impact.

Why was the Rapid7 team recognized?

In 2026, leading Rapid7 Intelligence researchers Edoardo Giuggioloni, Christiaan Beek, and Jindrich Karasek were named award winners for their groundbreaking work, "BPFdoor in Telecommunications: Sleeper Cells in the Shadows." The team uncovered sophisticated stealth access mechanisms and backdoors deployed by threat actors within critical telecommunications infrastructure.

Crucially, Rapid7 analysts did not stop at publishing a theoretical report. They spent thousands of hours collaborating closely with government agencies and CERT teams worldwide, developing scripts, analysis tooling, and reliable detection methods for these threats.

Comparison of approaches to threat analysis

Traditional threat analysis

• Goal: Searching for known signatures and providing basic descriptions of discovered malware.
• Outcome: Publishing static PDF reports that often fail to stop live intrusions.

Rapid7 Intelligence approach

• Goal: Deep reverse engineering of stealth threats, including autonomous agents and network-level attacks.
• Outcome: Transforming discovered indicators into actionable detection algorithms for immediate use by security teams.

How research translates across the Rapid7 solution portfolio

The true power and expertise of the Rapid7 Intelligence team lies in the fact that their research is never an isolated academic exercise. The results of their hard work are directly and continuously integrated into the company's product ecosystem. Intelligence on emerging threat actor tactics, indicators of compromise (IoCs), and advanced detection algorithms immediately enrich platforms such as InsightIDR and Managed Detection and Response (MDR).

Thanks to this continuous feedback loop, Rapid7 customers gain robust defense against the most sophisticated, covert attacks well before they become widespread. The analysts' hands-on engineering approach ensures all vendor solutions remain adaptive, highly intelligent, and prepared for tomorrow's threats.