Dhayalan Balakrishnan
Security Engineer II at Cobalt.io
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolDhayalan Balakrishnan is a security engineer with 10 years of hands-on experience in web application security, red teaming, and bug bounty hunting, currently at Booking.com and leading pentests at Cobalt.io. He blends a strong networking background and formal master’s training in computer security from Amsterdam with practical offensive skills honed on platforms like HackerOne, Zerocopter, and Synack. As a Google Summer of Code contributor to The Honeynet Project, he implemented privilege escalation features for the well-known Infection Monkey adversary emulation platform and later refined a VSFTPD backdoor exploit integrated into its reporting system. Known for creative exploitation techniques and long-term success in coordinated disclosure, he brings both rigorous research instincts and production-minded security engineering to large-scale web environments.
10 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Masters, Computer system security, Masters, Computer system security at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam)Master's degree, Computer and Information Systems Security/Information Assurance, Master's degree, Computer and Information Systems Security/Information Assurance at University of AmsterdamBachelor of Technology (BTech), Computer Engineering, 8.7, Bachelor of Technology (BTech), Computer Engineering, 8.7 at Indian Institute of Information Technology Design & Manufacturing Kancheepuram
English, Tamil
Github Skills (10)
it-security10
socket-io10
vulnerabilities10
exploit10
socket10
penetration-testing10
emulation10
python10
vulnerability10
security10
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
guardicore/monkey
Mar 2019 - May 2019
Infection Monkey - An open-source adversary emulation platform
Role in this project:
Security Engineer
Security EngineerContributions:22 commits, 6 PRs, 61 comments in 2 months
Contributions summary:Dhayalan primarily contributed to the security testing and exploitation aspects of the `monkey` repository, an adversary emulation platform. Their work focused on implementing and refining an exploit for the VSFTPD backdoor vulnerability, modifying the exploit code, and adding detailed descriptions for the report. This involved interacting with socket programming, integrating the exploit into the platform's reporting system, and handling the download and execution of payloads on compromised systems.
security-automationsecurity-toolspythonbugbountysecurity
Dhayalanb/monkey
Mar 2019 - Sep 2019
Infection Monkey - An automated pentest tool
Contributions:179 pushes, 29 branches, 1 comment in 6 months
pythonsecurity-toolsbugbountysecuritymonkey
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