R&D engineer with 10+ years industry experience. My primary area of expertise is writing high-performance, high-availability networking code and distributed systems. I have a great deal of experience in mobile telecommunications, and a particular interest for parallel and distributed systems. I've always been happier and more motivated when actively learning. I like studying and solving hard problems, firmly based on a quantitative approach. My ambition is to be the leader of a team that creates successful products, solving tangible problems for their users.

Skills

Systems Programming

expert
  • C
  • C++
  • Objective-C
  • Swift
  • CUDA
  • MPI
  • OpenMP
  • Haskell
  • Erlang
  • Python
  • x86
  • MIPS
  • ARM

Operating Systems

expert
  • Linux
  • XNU
  • device-drivers
  • kernel-development
  • memory-management
  • process-management
  • host-hardening

Information Security

advanced
  • Reverse-engineering
  • constraint-solving
  • vulnerability-research
  • cryptography
  • malware-analysis
  • source-code-auditing
  • secure-coding
  • security-by-design

Web

intermediate
  • JavaScript
  • HTML5
  • CSS
  • LAMP
  • MVC
  • REST

Project

beginner
  • Agile
  • TFS
  • JIRA
  • GitHub
  • Scrum
  • MS Project

Work Experience (6)

Software Architect
BMW Car IT
October 2016 - Current
https://bmw-carit.de
  • software-architecture
  • c
  • c++
  • python
  • yocto
  • embedded-system
  • linux-kernel
  • sdlc

Software architecture for transversal system services, implementation of tools to support the architecture process, and investigating problems found in R&D phase

Security Researcher
IO Active, Inc.
August 2013 - July 2016
https://ioactive.com/
  • code-auditing
  • vulnerability-research
  • c
  • c++
  • obj-c
  • swift
  • android
  • ios
  • xnu-kernel
  • sdlc

Security researcher as part of the IO Active team, primarily performing code audits for a variety of target applications, and exploit development for XNU and XNU-derivatives. Team leader for a group supporting the development of popular mobile banking applications, targeting more than 100,000 users over all major mobile platforms (Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows).

  • Lead of a 7-person team
  • Reversed and implemented iOS kernel jailbreaks
  • Acquired working knowledge of regulatory and industry data security standards (PCI, SOX, EU/Safe Harbor)
Research and Development Engineer
Niometrics PTE Ltd.
August 2012 - July 2013
http://www.niometrics.com/
  • c
  • c++
  • haskell
  • cuda
  • dpdk
  • dpi
  • traffic-analysis
  • network-intelligence
  • nosql
  • mongodb

Developer for network analytics and enforcement solutions employing deep packet inspection. As part of the company's mission, aimed to provide communications service providers with awareness and knowledge not just of application-level information, but up to the granularity of individual subscribers.

  • Development, testing, and optimization of NCORE, our routing and traffic inspection engine
  • Delivery of a software-based Layer-2 bridge based on NCORE
  • Delivery of an offline, massively parallel DPI solution utilising NVIDIA's CUDA
Research and Development Engineer
Nokia Siemens Networks
October 2010 - August 2012
http://www.nokia.com
  • c
  • fsm
  • python
  • continuous-integration
  • tdd
  • lte
  • flexi ng
  • network-programming
  • agile
  • scrum

Software development for LTE network elements, including feature development, black-box testing, code review, and related security research. I worked on features ranging from reporting and tracing, to session management and optimisation of low-level components. NSN has since been acquired by Nokia.

  • Championed and delivered a complete reporting subsystem for the Flexi Network Gateway
  • Took on responsibility for the implementation, maintenance, and optimisation of inhouse cryptography libraries
Research and Development Engineer
Hellenic National Defense General Staff
June 2009 - September 2010
http://www.geetha.mil.gr/en/
  • c
  • python
  • malware-analysis
  • linux-kernel
  • information-security

Software engineering, reverse engineering and analysis of advanced malware, investigation of stealth distribution techniques, and other novel research in information security topics as part of the Cyber Defense Directorate.

  • Took part in the organisation of the 1st Cyber Defense exercise - Panoptis 2010 - in Greece
Research and Development Engineer
ICS-FORTH - Distributed Computing Systems Lab
June 2006 - March 2009
http://www.ics.forth.gr/dcs/index_main.php?l=e&c=75
  • c
  • c++
  • anonymization
  • network-monitoring
  • linux-kernel
  • security

Performed novel research on network data anonymization methods and tools, which culminated in Anontool, a FOSS project. Worked with an international team of researchers on EC-funded projects such as LOBSTER & NoAH and solved problems in distributed and flexible network monitoring, as well as threat detection and honeypot research.

  • Developed the complete authentication and authorization subsystem for DiMAPI (Distributed Monitoring Application Interface)
  • As part of my MSc thesis, co-wrote an anonymization framework which was incorporated in DiMAPI

Volunteer

Contributor
CorsixTH
September 2015 - Current
  • c++
  • theme-hospital
  • windows
  • cmake
  • doxygen

Contributor and Windows tester for CorsixTH, an open source clone of the game Theme Hospital

Moderator
/r/askscience
November 2013 - Current

Moderator for the /r/askscience board, with a particular focus on the 'Computing' category.

Contributor
John the Ripper
October 2010 - October 2010
  • c
  • password-cracking
  • sha-2

Contributed SHA-2 performance improvements for John the Ripper, a fast password cracker with primary purpose to detect weak Unix passwords.

Co-creator
anontool
September 2010 - August 2015
  • c
  • anonymization
  • packet-traces
  • high-performance

Anontool is a FOSS packet trace anonymization framework, which offers high flexibility and high performance. I worked on anonymization as part of my MSc thesis, cowrote the PoC API and took over maintenance. Anontool is no longer maintained.

Blue Team
1st Greek National Cyber Defense exercise - Panoptis 2010
May 2010 - May 2010
  • ctf
  • vpn
  • virtualization
  • compartmentalization
  • scoring-systems
  • network-administration

Prepared CTF material and handled various administrative tasks, mostly related to submission verification.

Moderator
StackOverflow
August 2009 - Current
  • c
  • c++
  • linux-kernel
  • assembly

Participant, editor, and briefly moderator for the StackOverflow community, with ~2.0m people reached.

Teaching assistant
Computer Science Dept, University of Crete
October 2006 - June 2008
  • teaching
  • automated-grading

Prepared and gave lectures, organised assignment material, and performed grading for the courses: CS555 - Parallel Systems and Grids, CS345 - Operating Systems, CS240 - Data Structures

Education (2)

M.Sc. in
Parallel and Distributed Systems, Information Systems
University of Crete
2006 - 2008
  • secure systems
  • peer to peer systems
  • topics in parallel operating systems
  • distributed computing
  • parallel systems and grids
  • internet knowledge management
  • process management systems
  • advanced database topics
B.Sc. in
Computer Science
University of Crete
2001 - 2006
  • compilers
  • algorithms
  • computational-complexity
  • computer-architecture
  • operating-systems
  • software-engineering
  • databases
  • discrete-math
  • number-theory
  • cryptography
Grade: 7.69

Awards

Postgraduate scholarship
ICS-FORTH
2006

During my M.Sc. studies, I was awarded a yearly postgraduate scholarship for having the best marks, two consecutive times.

Publications

mfukar's ramblings in self-published
1 January 2013
Deep packet anonymization in ACM Digital Library
1 March 2009

In Proceedings of the Second ACM European Workshop on System Security (EuroSec)

1 October 2008

In Proceedings of the 5th Hellenic Conference on Artificial Intelligence (SETN 2008)

1 January 2008

In Proceedings of FloCon 2008

1 September 2007

In Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on the Value of Security through Collaboration (SECOVAL)

1 April 2006

In Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS)

Languages

Greek

Native speaker

English

Fluent

Interests

reading

  • fiction
  • Nevil Shute
  • Andrew Solomon
  • Herta Müller

Michael is a fan of historical fiction, but will read just about anything he'll come across.

guitar

Michael plays the guitar for more than half his life now, regularly transcribes songs, and occasionally performs as a session musician.

skydiving

Michael recently jumped from 10.000m on a clear sunny day. That's the beginning of the stratosphere!

References

“ He has demonstrated excellent capability and skills, and his strong personal opinion was critical in resolving major issues. ”
Colonel Aristoklis Pavlidis, Director, Cyber Defense Directorate, HNDGS
“ I strongly believe Michael will be an asset to any organisation with whom he works. ”
Evangelos P. Markatos, Distributed Computing Systems, ICS-FORTH
Jennifer Sunshine Steffens, CEO, IO Active, Inc.