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.
Software architecture for transversal system services, implementation of tools to support the architecture process, and investigating problems found in R&D phase
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Contributor and Windows tester for CorsixTH, an open source clone of the game Theme Hospital
Moderator for the /r/askscience board, with a particular focus on the 'Computing' category.
Contributed SHA-2 performance improvements for John the Ripper, a fast password cracker with primary purpose to detect weak Unix passwords.
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.
Prepared CTF material and handled various administrative tasks, mostly related to submission verification.
Participant, editor, and briefly moderator for the StackOverflow community, with ~2.0m people reached.
Prepared and gave lectures, organised assignment material, and performed grading for the courses: CS555 - Parallel Systems and Grids, CS345 - Operating Systems, CS240 - Data Structures
During my M.Sc. studies, I was awarded a yearly postgraduate scholarship for having the best marks, two consecutive times.
In Proceedings of the Second ACM European Workshop on System Security (EuroSec)
In Proceedings of the 5th Hellenic Conference on Artificial Intelligence (SETN 2008)
In Proceedings of FloCon 2008
In Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on the Value of Security through Collaboration (SECOVAL)
In Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS)
Michael is a fan of historical fiction, but will read just about anything he'll come across.
Michael plays the guitar for more than half his life now, regularly transcribes songs, and occasionally performs as a session musician.
Michael recently jumped from 10.000m on a clear sunny day. That's the beginning of the stratosphere!
“ He has demonstrated excellent capability and skills, and his strong personal opinion was critical in resolving major issues. ”
“ I strongly believe Michael will be an asset to any organisation with whom he works. ”