Steven Van Acker
Co-Founder & Cybersecurity Advisor at OverTheWire.org (formerly PullThePlug.org)
Gothenburg, Sweden
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSteven Van Acker is a cybersecurity researcher, engineer and entrepreneur with 13 years of hands-on experience securing complex systems across automotive, enterprise and research settings. Co-founder of VantaSec and a long-time lead developer and organizer for OverTheWire, he blends offensive security, secure engineering and community-building—running CTFs, coaching teams and maintaining critical infrastructure. At Volvo he researched and pentested vehicles and fleet solutions, and his academic tenure (PhD and postdoc) produced publishable research on browser and client-side security. An active open-source contributor, he has improved widely used tools such as pwntools and scapy, adding multithreaded bruteforce support and protocol-layer fixes that benefit the CTF and automotive security communities. Based in Gothenburg and serving on the OWASP Gothenburg board, he pairs deep technical rigor with practical deployment and automation experience, including CI/CD and build pipeline improvements.
13 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
Master in engineering sciences: Computer Science, Engineering sciences, Master in engineering sciences: Computer Science, Engineering sciences at KU LeuvenScience-Mathematics, Science-Mathematics at Sint Theresia College Kapelle-op-den-bos
Github Skills (40)
content-management-system10
docker10
maintenance10
assembly10
ctf10
packet-injection10
python10
security-txt10
scapy10
scripting10
network-analysis10
bash10
packet10
travis-ci10
dockers10
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
OverTheWireOrg/OverTheWire-website
Nov 2012 - Jan 2023
OverTheWire website
Role in this project:
Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:221 commits, 61 PRs, 154 pushes in 10 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Steven primarily focused on updating and maintaining the website content. They made changes to several pages, including news, wargame descriptions, and contact information. Furthermore, they corrected level numbers, added new levels to the Natas wargame, and implemented a WeChall scoreboard. The user appears to be involved in content management and overall website updates.
reactoverthewire
zardus/ctf-tools
Feb 2017 - Mar 2017
Some setup scripts for security research tools.
Role in this project:DevOps Engineer
DevOps EngineerContributions:53 commits, 21 PRs, 1 comment in 1 month
Contributions summary:Steven primarily focused on enhancing the continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipeline for the `ctf-tools` repository. Their contributions included modifying the `travis-ci.sh` script to improve test execution, adding logging capabilities for better debugging and performance analysis, and integrating a system to generate build status pages. Furthermore, the user updated the build process to accommodate testing multiple tools and improved the handling of expected failures, indicating a focus on automation and reliable build processes. These improvements streamlined the build workflow and provided valuable insights into test performance.
security-toolssecurity-researchbugbountysecuritypenetration-testing
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