In the latest Humans of Talos, Amy sits down with Senior Vulnerability Researcher Philippe Laulheret to demystify the world of ethical hacking. Philippe shares his unique journey from French engineering school to the front lines of cybersecurity, explaining how his lifelong love for solving puzzles helps him uncover critical security flaws before they can be exploited.
From his memorable experiment using a green onion to bypass a biometric fingerprint reader to his perspective on the reality of cybersecurity versus what we see in the movies, Philippe provides a fascinating look at the work that keeps our digital world safe.
Amy Ciminnisi: So, can you talk to me a little bit about what you do in vulnerability research?
Philippe Laulheret: I work in vulnerability research. Basically, my job is to find vulnerabilities in software, hardware, or things physically. It’s an interesting position because I usually get to choose which target I want to look at, which confuses people usually, because usually it’s a consulting role, or someone asks you to do that. But for us, we find vulnerabilities in things that we think are important. And then this way, people in different teams can write detection rules, and our customers are protected.
AC: I love that you get to kind of pick a niche and explore. How did you get into this?
PL: My deepest interest was more in reverse engineering, which is understanding how things work, software in particular. Throughout my whole life, I was really curious and really wanted to understand stuff. I guess research is an extension of that where you need to understand how the system works, and then it’s a puzzle where you need to find a way to break it. In my teenage years, I was really interested in that. I started playing Capture The Flag, which are challenges where people design exercises where there is a bug to find and exploit. It was really fun. I was doing that to stay sharp with my skills, and eventually, I was able to transition from regular development work to actual research. All those years of playing CTF really helped, even if it wasn't professional.
AC: Did you go to school initially for development work? What kind of career path led you here?
PL: Originally, as you can hear, I have a French accent. In France, we have engineering schools, which are fancy grad schools. The process is first you study very hard in math and physics, and then you go to grad school. At that time, I was convinced I wanted to do security, and I joined an electrical and computer engineering school. Somehow, in that school, I discovered an interest for different aspects of software development. I was getting interested in computer vision and other things. When I moved to the U.S. for development work instead of security work, I worked in a design studio for four years, which was really fun. I was making interactive installations. But as I said, I was playing CTF on the side to keep security pretty high in my head. Eventually, I moved to New York and joined a cybersecurity startup, and finally, I moved back to the Pacific Northwest, where I’m currently living, and I was finally able to do vulnerability research the way I wanted to.
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