Russell Hancox
CTO & Co-founder at North Pole Security
New York, New York, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRussell Hancox is a security-focused technology leader and co-founder serving as CTO of North Pole Security, bringing 14 years of engineering experience and a track record of building resilient systems. Previously a Staff Software Engineer at Google for over a decade, he specialized in macOS security and fleet management—contributing to high-profile open-source projects like Google’s Santa (binary authorization) and macops. He blends hands-on secure coding, vulnerability hardening, and full-stack tooling with practical DevOps practices such as CI integration and automation. Early roles at Apple Retail and IBM grounded his customer-facing troubleshooting and operational discipline, while a First Class Software Engineering degree from Birmingham City University underpins his technical rigor. Known for finding and fixing subtle XPC and memory issues, he brings a pragmatic eye for reducing attack surface and ensuring data integrity in production systems. Based in New York, he pairs startup leadership with deep, low-level security engineering experience.
14 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Software Engineering, First Class (Hons), Software Engineering, First Class (Hons) at Birmingham City UniversityEvesham High School
Stackoverflow
386reputation
31kreached
6answers
0questions
Github Skills (21)
objective-c10
it-security10
security10
macos10
system-security10
cicd9
python9
automations8
system-administration8
automation8
binarydiff8
git7
c-language7
cprogramming-language7
html6
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
google/santa
Nov 2014 - Jan 2023
A binary authorization and monitoring system for macOS
Role in this project:
Security Engineer
Security EngineerContributions:49 releases, 641 reviews, 874 commits in 8 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Russell's contributions focused on enhancing the security of the macOS binary authorization and monitoring system, "Santa". The commits reveal efforts to improve the system's resilience against attacks by removing potential vulnerabilities, implementing security best practices, and hardening the code against exploitation. Specifically, the user addressed XPC vulnerabilities, prevented potential memory issues, and added enhancements for the system's data integrity and correct processing.
objective-cauthorizationsecuritysantaallowlist
google/macops
Nov 2014 - Aug 2022
Utilities, tools, and scripts for managing and tracking a fleet of Macintoshes in a corporate environment
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:1 review, 74 commits, 35 PRs in 7 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Russell contributed to both backend and frontend aspects of the `macops` repository, as evidenced by changes to both Objective-C and Python code. Their work included simplifying OID decoding and adding the `deprecation_notifier` tool, demonstrating an understanding of system utilities and macOS management. Furthermore, they integrated Travis CI for automated testing of the `gmacpyutil` library and `run_it`, showcasing DevOps practices.
system-administrationendpoint-securitytrackingcorporatefleet
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