About

Good engineering involves thinking about how things can be made to work; the security professional mindset involves thinking about how things can be made to fail.

Stefan Frei

My name is Stefan Frei and I am the author of this website and its content. I refine and exercise my pentesting, consulting, and security research skills daily, for more than a decade. After several years with the ISS X-Force, I decided to go for a PhD to combine academic research with my experience gained in the field. My primary research interests are the vulnerability ecosystem, security econometrics, and networking security. As a licensed helicopter and fixed wing aerobatic pilot I am used to look ahead and to think out of the box. I am is a frequent contributor to security conferences, such as BlackHat, DefCon or FRIST.

Inspired by the problems surfaced during security assessment engagements I wrote many tools to find efficient solutions. My hard disk became littered with these programs so it was time to bring them together under a common hood www.techzoom.net. It is the purpose of this website to store and have this tools and content available when needed, to me and to the public.

Stefan Frei - Short Bio

• Stefan Frei received the master degree in electrical engineering from the Federal Institute of Technology of Zurich (ETH Zurich) in 1995.
• As a winner of an ERASMUS scholarship, he wrote the master thesis in optical communication at the école nationale supérieure des télécomunications (ENST) in Paris, France.
• Until 2000, he was mainly involved in networking security and the development and operation of secure web-, mail-, and payment-applications.
• He then joined ISS X-Force EMEA PSS (Professional Security Services) team to provide technical expertise and security consulting for international clients. He specialized in vulnerability research, networking and web application security.
• In late 2004, he rejoined ETH Zurich for a Ph.D. research position in information security under supervision of Prof. Bernhard Plattner. His research interests are the vulnerability lifecycle and ecosystem, and networking security.
• Since 2006, Stefan Frei is lecturer (Dozent ETH) of the networking security course at ETH Zurich.
• In 2007, Stefan received his master of advanced studies in management, technology and economics (MAS MTEC) from the management department of ETH Zurich.

Related Activities, Contracting

• Since 1997 I work as a part time instructor for Swiss Aviation Training, teaching flight performance and computer technology for future airline pilots.
• University lecturer for Networking Security at ETH Zürich, usually during the winter term.
• Since I rejoined ETH I executed several security assessment assignments as a contractor, mainly in the Finance and Chemical industry.