Rob Olson [nerdprof]
Hacker, Professor, Ethicist
About
Rob is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing Security at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is also the former undergraduate director for his program, composed of over 500 cybersecurity students. He teaches courses in a variety of flavors of offensive security, reverse engineering, and application security including both web and mobile security. Prior to joining RIT, Rob taught computer science courses at the State University of New York at Fredonia.
In addition to teaching, Rob is also the technical lead for the Eaton Cybersecurity SAFE Lab. This is an “applied research” lab on campus which largely performs offensive engagements for clients. Anyone outside of Academia would call this a consultancy.
Rob holds two Masters of Science degrees. One is in Management Information Systems and the other is in Interdisciplinary Studies (Cognitive Science). He originally started out in Artificial Intelligence, but found Information Security more fun and less evil. Once upon a time he also completed a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Philosophy, where he focused on metaphysics and ethics. He considers that minor equally both the biggest waste of time and the most valuable experience of his educational career.
He considers front-end development – notably HTML and CSS – to be a form of black magic, so bear with him on the design of this site.
More information can be found at https://nerdprof.github.io
Selected Public Talks
Getting Started with Windows Implant Development
Bsides Rochester, 2022
ATT&CKing Windows
InfoSec 716, March 2020
Operationalizing the MITRE ATT&CK Framework
Bsides Cleveland, 2019
What They’re Teaching Kids These Days: Comparing Security Curricula and Accreditations to Industry Needs
Black Hat USA, 2017
Writing Your First Exploit
Def Con Workship, 2016
Get in touch
Rob can be found as nerdprof or nerdpr0f [nerdpr-zero-f… the zero may not render well] on most social media platforms.
Selected Courses Taught
Offensive Security Engineering [Exploit/malware development]
Enterprise Penetration Testing
Network and System Security Auditing
Mobile Device Security and Forensics
Principles of Web Application Security
Web Server and Application Security Auditing
Reverse Engineering Fundamentals
Compiler Construction
Paradigms of Programming Languages
Sometimes I Do Security 