Appreciate the (unaffiliated) shout out! No comment on the drive recovery idea...
The fundamentals in the article are all relevant to the hard drive challenge, though the actual multi-step solution to our CTF is rather different.
If hacking hard drives sounds intriguing to you, we're hiring reverse engineers and security researchers! See our whoishiring posts and careers page for details:
I'm glad you all are still doing this challenge. Ang handed one to me at Defcon 6 or 7 years ago and it's one of the most interesting challenges I've ever attempted.
Didn't finish it but learned a ton.
For anyone reading, Red Balloon is a great place with great people and I highly recommend anyone remotely interested give them a look.
1) so what?
2) evidence?
3) it's very obviously a wordpress site using elementor
4) the content really hasn't changed a ton in the last 10 years or so as far as I can tell
5) again, so what?
As a data point for anyone curious, they're US based ("Midtown West in New York City") and their careers page mentions the roles are all in-office ones.
They opened/are-opening a northern virginia office, according to their HN posts.
But yeah, as much as I would love to work with them, I have zero desire to ever move out of the southeastern US and especially back to NY. The nature of what they do does kind of require in-office work though.
Red Balloon Security | Security Researchers, Software Engineers | NYC, Northern Virginia | ONSITE, HYBRID | Full-time, Interns (paid) | US Citizenship Required | https://redballoonsecurity.com
We are a team of expert researchers and engineers focused on securing embedded devices. We work with partners across critical industries, and on government-funded research programs (think DARPA). "Full-stack" for us doesn't just stop at back end code; it means being comfortable with operating systems, firmware, and signals going over the wire. You'll succeed here if you are a quick learner who loves working independently on tough, technical problems nobody has ever solved before.
Day-to-day tasks might include:
* Tearing apart a device in our lab, reverse engineering its firmware, and finding security vulnerabilities
* Developing an automated, robotic platform for hardware reverse engineering (custom hardware, vision models, user interfaces, etc.)
* Hooking and patching RTOS kernel functions to execute defensive device integrity validation code, without violating real-time requirements
* Building scalable servers for processing millions of device telemetry messages across thousands of concurrent connections
* Maintaining open-source reverse engineering tools (like OFRAK https://ofrak.com) and cooking up fun demos for hacker conferences (like this web game we built for DEF CON in 2023 https://ofrak.com/tetris/)
Our main office is in Manhattan, but we are building out a new office in Northern Virginia. US citizenship required. Bonus points if you have an active security clearance, or are willing to get one.
Be sure to mention Hacker News in your application.
Red Balloon Security | Security Researchers, Software Engineers | NYC, Northern Virginia | ONSITE, HYBRID | Full-time, Interns (paid) | US Citizenship Required | https://redballoonsecurity.com
We are a team of expert researchers and engineers focused on securing embedded devices. We work with partners across critical industries, and on government-funded research programs (think DARPA). "Full-stack" for us doesn't just stop at back end code; it means being comfortable with operating systems, firmware, and signals going over the wire. You'll succeed here if you are a quick learner who loves working independently on tough, technical problems nobody has ever solved before.
Day-to-day tasks might include:
* Tearing apart a device in our lab, reverse engineering its firmware, and finding security vulnerabilities
* Developing an automated, robotic platform for hardware reverse engineering (custom hardware, vision models, user interfaces, etc.)
* Hooking and patching RTOS kernel functions to execute defensive device integrity validation code, without violating real-time requirements
* Building scalable servers for processing millions of device telemetry messages across thousands of concurrent connections
* Maintaining open-source reverse engineering tools (like OFRAK https://ofrak.com) and cooking up fun demos for hacker conferences (like this web game we built for DEF CON in 2023 https://ofrak.com/tetris/)
Our main office is in Manhattan, but we are building out a new office in Northern Virginia. US citizenship required. Bonus points if you have an active security clearance, or are willing to get one.
The fundamentals in the article are all relevant to the hard drive challenge, though the actual multi-step solution to our CTF is rather different.
If hacking hard drives sounds intriguing to you, we're hiring reverse engineers and security researchers! See our whoishiring posts and careers page for details:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47977643
- https://redballoonsecurity.com/careers/
Be sure to mention Hacker News if you apply.