David Kennedy
Board Member at SANS Technology Institute
Berea, Ohio, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDavid Kennedy is a veteran cybersecurity entrepreneur and former US Marine with decades of operational and leadership experience, best known as the founder of TrustedSec and co-founder/Chief Hacking Officer of Binary Defense. He blends hands-on offensive tooling—creator of the widely used Social-Engineer Toolkit and contributor to high-profile exploit and utility repos—with executive roles as CSO, board member, and advisor across security startups and education (SANS Tech Institute, Axiad, Invictus). His background spans classified intelligence work and Fortune 1000 security leadership, giving him rare perspective on both tactical threat techniques and enterprise risk programs. An author and conference founder (DerbyCon) who co-wrote a top-ranked Metasploit guide, he also delivers practical open-source tooling for real-world incident detection and exploitation research. Based in Ohio, he now focuses on scaling detection capabilities, mentoring security teams, and advising portfolio companies on resilient, phishing-resistant authentication and operational readiness.
7 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Business Management, Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Business Management at Malone UniversityHawaii Pacific University and Devry
Github Skills (37)
shellcode10
develop10
injection10
inject10
python10
vulnerability-scanners10
patch10
vulnerability10
cybersecurity10
tornado10
it-security10
security10
code-injection10
reverse-shell10
python-requests10
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
trustedsec/trevorc2
Mar 2019 - Jan 2022
TrevorC2 is a legitimate website (browsable) that tunnels client/server communications for covert command execution.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:20 commits, 7 PRs, 13 pushes in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the back-end functionality of the TrevorC2 project, a covert command and control framework. They implemented a new "ifconfig" command for server interface data and fixed server redirection issues. Key improvements included bug fixes, such as correcting a cookie handling issue, and enhancements like introducing a new redirect option. The user also updated the server-side code by adding features and improving overall functionality.
golangclient-servercommunicationstunnelsbrowsable
trustedsec/unicorn
Apr 2019 - Apr 2022
Unicorn is a simple tool for using a PowerShell downgrade attack and inject shellcode straight into memory. Based on Matthew Graeber's powershell attacks and the powershell bypass technique presented by David Kennedy (TrustedSec) and Josh Kelly at Defcon 18.
Role in this project:Security Engineer
Security EngineerContributions:45 commits, 10 PRs, 30 pushes in 3 years 1 month
Contributions summary:David primarily contributed to the development and maintenance of the Magic Unicorn attack vector, a tool designed for PowerShell injection attacks. Their contributions included adding new features like Windows 7 support, fixing macro injection techniques, and adding options for meterpreter generation. Furthermore, the user focused on enhancing the tool's evasion capabilities through code randomization, improved AMSI bypass methods, and adjustments to shellcode generation. The user's efforts centered on adapting the tool to bypass security measures and maintain its effectiveness in offensive security scenarios.
memorypowershellshellcodepentestbypass
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