My Projects
$ls cybersecurity-research/
SOC Homelab – Wazuh SIEM
- Architected a full SIEM pipeline using Wazuh across Kali Linux and Ubuntu nodes, ingesting and correlating logs from simulated attacks.
- Simulated attacker behavior (port scanning, brute force, lateral movement), then tuned detection rules from the defender side.
Splunk SIEM & Detection Engineering Lab
- Deployed Splunk Enterprise on macOS with a Universal Forwarder on Ubuntu (OrbStack), configuring centralized log ingestion into a dedicated Linux index for authentication and system telemetry.
- Developed SPL queries to investigate authentication events, failed SSH logins, and security-related Linux activity; built an interactive Linux Authentication Monitoring dashboard visualizing login trends and source IP activity.
- Designed and tested custom detection logic for SSH brute-force attacks using live telemetry and simulated attack scenarios; mapped all detections to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
- Documented investigation methodology as a personal SOC portfolio covering detection engineering, threat hunting, and incident response — extensible to future Windows, Sysmon, and macOS telemetry.
Cloud Security & Privacy Capstone
- Designed and ran 15 controlled AWS misconfiguration experiments across IAM, S3, and network configurations to quantify real-world data exposure risk.
- Produced remediation steps validated against NIST and CIS benchmarks; presented findings to the Dean of Honors and earned research distinction.
Offensive Security Research – Hack The Box
- Compromised 31 Hack The Box machines, exploiting misconfigurations across SSH, FTP, HTTP/HTTPS, and SMB services.
- Mapped attack techniques, privilege escalation paths, and persistence mechanisms into a personal MITRE ATT&CK knowledge base, and authored Medium write-ups on methodology and defensive controls.
$ls software-engineering/
Classroom & Study Availability Tracker
- Full-stack classroom/study-space availability tracker with a Python & MySQL backend and JavaScript/HTML frontend, replacing manual lookups with real-time database queries.
- Designed and optimized SQL queries and relational schemas to turn raw scheduling data into accurate, real-time availability for students.
PostIt Platform
- Database-driven web app (PHP, MySQL, HTML/CSS) that lets users post used items for others to claim for free.
- Built secure user authentication, normalized relational schemas, and server-side validation, with full CRUD functionality powering a dynamic PHP backend.
Two-Pass Assembler
- Implemented a two-pass assembler in C: pass one builds a symbol table to resolve labels and forward references, pass two encodes instructions into binary machine code.
- Used pointer arithmetic and manual memory management to produce functional binary output directly from assembly source.
MoodMe – AI Mood Detection Tool
- Real-time mood detection program built with C++ and HTML on Replit, analyzing user responses to identify moods through interactive input.
- Focused on user interaction and logic-based sentiment recognition.