Ivan Ristić
Chief Scientist at Red Sift
London, England, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolIvan Ristić is a seasoned security engineer and founder with 15+ years of experience building widely used security tools and standards. As author of Bulletproof TLS and PKI and creator of SSL Labs and ModSecurity, he has shaped best practices for SSL/TLS, PKI and web application defense and helped harden hundreds of thousands of websites. He founded Hardenize, a continuous security monitoring platform later acquired by Red Sift, where he now serves as Chief Scientist, blending product leadership with deep technical research. A long-time open-source contributor and technical writer, his work on the ssllabs scan client and research documentation reflects both hands-on engineering and rigorous threat-modeling. He served on Let’s Encrypt’s technical advisory board and Black Hat’s review board, demonstrating influence across industry and community-driven security initiatives. Based in London, he pairs academic rigor with practical, production-grade tooling—often surfacing nuanced protocol pitfalls most practitioners miss.
15 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
B.Sc. (Hons) Information Technology and Computing, B.Sc. (Hons) Information Technology and Computing at The Open University
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (13)
ssl10
go10
api10
postgresql10
tls1210
tls1310
database-design10
apidoc10
documentation10
xslt10
json9
font-face8
font-style8
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
ssllabs/research
May 2012 - Jun 2016
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:73 commits, 1 PR, 5 pushes in 4 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Ivan primarily focused on updating and modifying documentation files within the repository. Their contributions include importing whitepapers, fixing admonitions, updating the rating guide to address current threats, and adding a new stylesheet alternative with updated font configurations. The user also made changes to improve the user experience by tweaking font sizes and colors in the documentation.
ssllabs/ssllabs-scan
Oct 2014 - Jan 2017
A command-line reference-implementation client for SSL Labs APIs, designed for automated and/or bulk testing.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:4 releases, 188 commits, 17 PRs in 2 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Ivan primarily focused on enhancing the functionality and structure of the `ssllabs-scan` project. They introduced a new SQL schema (`pulse.sql`), likely for database integration related to SSL pulse data. Additionally, they refactored the Go code, incorporating new functionalities related to API interaction and SSL/TLS analysis. These changes included modifying the API endpoint, adding support for features like HSTS and HPKP policies, and adapting code to match API updates.
testingsslreference-linereference-implementation
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