Stephen Chavez
Research Scientist
Denver, Colorado, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolStephen Chavez is a research scientist and information security engineer with 12 years of experience focused on vulnerability research, IoT security, and hardening medical devices. Based in Denver, he combines hands-on software engineering and DevOps skills—contributing backend and build-system fixes to open-source projects like Start9Labs’ start-os—with deep security expertise such as cross-language password hashing tests and remediation of a truncated-hash vulnerability. His early project to make a power wheelchair semi-autonomous catalyzed a lasting interest in securing medical devices and led to international conference presentations and an open-source framework for the proprietary R-Net protocol. Comfortable moving between low-level protocol work and systems engineering, he has a track record of turning personal, practical problems into broadly useful security research and tooling.
12 years of coding experience
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Stackoverflow
1reputation
105reached
0answers
1question
Github Skills (27)
password-hash10
back-end-development10
testing10
ruby10
php10
hash10
rust10
backend10
java9
http9
csharp9
dotnet-core9
devops9
javas9
tor9
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
Start9Labs/start-os
Aug 2022 - Nov 2022
Open source Linux distro optimized for self-hosting
Role in this project:
Backend & DevOps Engineer
Backend & DevOps EngineerContributions:17 reviews, 67 commits, 9 PRs in 3 months
Contributions summary:Stephen primarily contributed to backend development within the `start-os` repository, focusing on HTTP reader implementation and Tor daemon fixes. They also worked on modifying build scripts, including dependency pinning for the CLI and adjusting build configurations. Further contributions include IP address type changes, integration of localhost support, and fixing a typo within an embassy-init file.
privacy-enhancing-technologiesbrowserrustp2pbitcoin-node
defuse/password-hashing
Aug 2014 - Aug 2014
Password hashing code.
Role in this project:Back-end & Testing Developer
Back-end & Testing DeveloperContributions:31 commits, 3 comments in 6 days
Contributions summary:Stephen primarily contributed to adding compatible versions of password hashing implementations in Ruby, C#, and Java, integrating existing code from pull requests. They also focused on creating and modifying test files to validate the cross-compatibility of these different language implementations. Furthermore, the user addressed a critical security issue by fixing a truncated hash vulnerability within the PHP implementation, demonstrating a deep understanding of the password hashing process.
hashingpassword-generatorpassword-managerpasswordpassword-hashing
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