Matthias St Pierre
Technical Lead Cryptography at NCP engineering GmbH
Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMatthias St Pierre is a technical lead in cryptography with 11 years of professional software engineering experience and a PhD in mathematics (magna cum laude) from FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. Based in Nuremberg, he leads cryptographic engineering at NCP while serving as an OpenSSL committer and OTC member, shaping core TLS/SSL and RNG improvements used widely across the internet. His open-source contributions include deep protocol work on Wireshark (IPsec/ESP dissector enhancements) and OpenSSL (DRBG/reseeding and entropy management), reflecting rare expertise at the intersection of protocol analysis and crypto engineering. He has a track record of practical security fixes—ICV verification, AEAD handling, and NAT-traversal support in Scapy—that improve real-world interoperability and forensic visibility. Colleagues rely on him for rigorous, math-grounded solutions that translate into hardened, maintainable code in critical security libraries. An interesting detail: his GitHub bio humorously echoes C-style memory allocation, hinting at a pragmatic developer who still enjoys low-level craftsmanship.
10 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Mathematics, magna cum laude, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Mathematics, magna cum laude at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
Github Skills (26)
develop10
python10
data-manipulation10
ipsec10
keyv10
packet10
c-programming10
c1110
manipulation10
security10
c1710
aes-gcm10
asn110
openssl10
cryptography10
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
openssl/openssl
Sep 2018 - Aug 2022
TLS/SSL and crypto library
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Security Engineer
Back-end Developer & Security EngineerContributions:401 reviews, 174 commits, 648 PRs in 3 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Matthias primarily focused on enhancements and fixes related to the OpenSSL library's random number generator (RNG) and related security features. Their contributions include changes to the DRBG (Deterministic Random Bit Generator) API, addressing reseeding issues, introducing new features like the master DRBG for improved entropy management, and implementing time-based reseeding. Furthermore, the user addressed security vulnerabilities and fixed issues related to the handling of entropy and the inclusion of various random device sources.
crypto-librarycryptographyssltlscrypto
secdev/scapy
Dec 2020 - Jan 2023
Scapy: the Python-based interactive packet manipulation program & library.
Role in this project:Security Engineer
Security EngineerContributions:77 reviews, 7 commits, 33 PRs in 2 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Matthias primarily focused on enhancing the Scapy library's capabilities related to network security and packet manipulation. Their contributions included fixing bugs related to ASN.1 parsing, specifically resolving issues with obsolete OIDs in the `asn1.mib` module. Additionally, they implemented and tested the UDP encapsulation of IPsec ESP packets, including support for IKEv1 and IKEv2, improving Scapy's functionality for NAT traversal. The user also improved the dissection of IKEv2 payloads, adding support for various decrypted payloads, showing a solid understanding of network protocols and security.
pythonpython2manipulationsecurity-toolsscapy
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