3 ms·

What do you mean by "bringing systems programming game"? What kind of experience would qualify?

tptacek 16y ago
We work in a lot of different application domains; the common denominator is "low level". So: * If you're interested in web security, you'd want to be conversant in protocol-level HTTP; a good acid test might be "could quickly implement chunked encoding". * If you're interested in OS security, you'd want to be conversant in virtual memory management and system call interfaces; a good acid test might be "could implement the userland side of a system call without using the library stubs". * If you're interested in software security, you'd want to be conversant in C/C++. If you're interested in security research at all, feel free to email me. You can't waste my time. The only reason any of these technical items are here is that we hope they'll be attractive to the people we want to hire; we're not trying to disqualify anyone.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  This does sound interesting, unfortunately I fall just short of being able to implement chunked encoding, so maybe in the future! EDIT: I am no longer unable to implement chunked encoding. That wasn't complicated at all. I have no idea why I'm telling you all.
  - whichdokta 16y ago
    You may find this is the case with a lot of topics commonly considered 'black magic' - the real determinant IMO is whether you enjoy work that requires a high attention to detail! :)
    - StavrosK 16y ago
      That's true, I just thought the protocol would be more esoteric and with more corner cases than that :)
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Did you enjoy figuring that out and making it work? That's pretty much the whole job, except, replace "chunked encoding" with "every warped undocumented proprietary protocol anyone has ever built", and replace the payoff of "now I know how chunked coding works" to "now I can make withdrawals from other people's bank accounts".
    - StavrosK 16y ago
      It was quite enjoyable, but I suspect that finding how undocumented protocols work by changing a value here or there to see how the transmission changes is much more exciting...

We work in a lot of different application domains; the common denominator is "low level". So: * If you're interested in web security, you'd want to be conversant in protocol-level HTTP; a good acid test might be "could quickly implement chunked encoding". * If you're interested in OS security, you'd want to be conversant in virtual memory management and system call interfaces; a good acid test might be "could implement the userland side of a system call without using the library stubs". * If you're interested in software security, you'd want to be conversant in C/C++. If you're interested in security research at all, feel free to email me. You can't waste my time. The only reason any of these technical items are here is that we hope they'll be attractive to the people we want to hire; we're not trying to disqualify anyone.

StavrosK 16y ago
This does sound interesting, unfortunately I fall just short of being able to implement chunked encoding, so maybe in the future! EDIT: I am no longer unable to implement chunked encoding. That wasn't complicated at all. I have no idea why I'm telling you all.
- whichdokta 16y ago
  You may find this is the case with a lot of topics commonly considered 'black magic' - the real determinant IMO is whether you enjoy work that requires a high attention to detail! :)
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    That's true, I just thought the protocol would be more esoteric and with more corner cases than that :)
- tptacek 16y ago
  Did you enjoy figuring that out and making it work? That's pretty much the whole job, except, replace "chunked encoding" with "every warped undocumented proprietary protocol anyone has ever built", and replace the payoff of "now I know how chunked coding works" to "now I can make withdrawals from other people's bank accounts".
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    It was quite enjoyable, but I suspect that finding how undocumented protocols work by changing a value here or there to see how the transmission changes is much more exciting...