Rootbeer Security

About

Everything is open source if you know where to look

I started my cybersecurity journey early, mainly by hacking into my dad's laptop to play video games. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, so I went to college to study computer engineering. I worked in my college's IT department for a couple of years, but I wasn't satisfied. Computers were fun, but I adored embedded systems, so I made them my concentration.

That's when it clicked: I needed to understand exactly how things worked. Embedded systems made these concepts easier to grasp because they weren't designed to hide everything behind high-level abstractions.

Then I was introduced to the SystemsCyber group, which demonstrated a truck drive-by attack. You're telling me hacking can have physical consequences?! I was in love. I went on to discover vulnerabilities and develop automotive security tooling of my own. I now work with automotive systems, preventing safety-critical failures.

Why Bottoms Up? The phrase describes raising a glass and emptying its contents (typically into one's mouth). When working with systems, you quickly become familiar with top-down and bottom-up engineering (my thesis was based on this). I combined the two ideas: as much as I like beer, I love reverse engineering a system until it becomes open source. Hence the motto, “Everything is open source if you know where to look.”