Lev Stipakov
Software Engineer at OpenVPN Technologies, Inc
Oulu, Mainland Finland
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolLev Stipakov is a seasoned full-stack software engineer and founder based in Oulu, Finland, with over a decade focused on backend systems, security, and build engineering. He has been a core contributor to OpenVPN projects—ranging from the daemon and client libraries to Windows TAP drivers and GUI tooling—bringing practical security fixes, protocol improvements and cross-platform build support. Comfortable across C/C++, Python, shell and Java on Linux, Android and Windows, Lev combines systems-level debugging with pragmatic DevOps work such as packaging, ARM64 support and OpenSSL migrations. At F-Secure he enhanced VPN and detection clients with features like peer-id and async RADIUS plugins, reflecting a knack for improving reliability and UX in security-sensitive products. As an active open-source maintainer and entrepreneur (founder of Lesti Software), he pairs deep protocol knowledge with product-minded engineering and a track record of making low-level changes that yield measurable user and operational benefits.
11 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor's degree, Bachelor's degree at ITMO University
English, Finnish, Russian, Spanish
Stackoverflow
3,188reputation
332kreached
11answers
45questions
Github Skills (60)
debugging10
c-language10
wp-api10
architecture10
windows10
linux10
winapi10
ui-design10
c-programming10
c1110
data-structure10
openvpn10
security10
c1710
system10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
OpenVPN/openvpn
Nov 2014 - Jan 2023
OpenVPN is an open source VPN daemon
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Security Engineer
Back-end Developer & Security EngineerContributions:220 commits, 1 PR, 2 branches in 8 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Lev primarily worked on improving the security and stability of the OpenVPN software. Their contributions include implementing a new packet format for data transfer, addressing memory corruption issues, preventing replay attacks, and fixing a vulnerability related to client IP address handling. Furthermore, they enhanced the status output to include peer-id, aiding in the analysis of floating logs, and incorporated code to handle situations where clients connect from unreachable networks. They also improved the robustness of the code related to data channel keys.
securityvpndaemonwireguardopenvpn
OpenVPN/openvpn-build
Sep 2018 - Jan 2023
OpenVPN Build
Role in this project:DevOps Engineer & Build Engineer
DevOps Engineer & Build EngineerContributions:88 reviews, 97 commits, 134 PRs in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Lev focused on enhancing the build and packaging system for OpenVPN, specifically targeting the Windows platform. They implemented support for building with Visual Studio 2017 and later versions, fixed dependency URLs and build instructions, and integrated ARM64 support. Furthermore, the user added support for the Wintun TUN driver and contributed to the overall stability and maintainability of the build process by addressing issues related to ActiveSetup, OpenSSL, and architecture support. They also updated the build process to OpenSSL 3 and adapted it to the changes introduced by manifest and preset updates.
vpnwireguardopenvpn
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