What is the most important thing when choosing a department? Probably not just that you're going to be a great, well-paid professional, but also that your years at university are going to be comfortable, fulfilling, and rewarding. When you're surrounded by students who know what they're aiming for. Teachers who are ready to share all their practical tips here and now, and, moreover, who give a giant boost to academic activities, helping you to participate in conferences, including those abroad. Each of these points is important not only for your education but also for your all-round development. Our Department №42 provides all of the above, I am convinced of my own experience.

I was interested in the "B" faculty (at that time it was called that) and the direction of the departments concentrated there. I went to MEPhI, having a red diploma in radio electronics, which I received at the technical school. With my diploma, I could enter without entrance examinations straight to the third year in the same direction, and in the end, I passed the entrance exams with the highest score and entered the first year of MEPhI. After my graduation I worked as a teacher for another seven years as a hobby on weekends, teaching my course "Software Protection". But now I somehow lost touch with MEPhI, but I regularly meet my students at various international conferences and as speakers. Currently, I hold the position of Chief Offensive Researcher at NVIDIA. It's a pretty high position, I'm only one level below the CEO of the company. Nevertheless, I only do technical work and strategic planning related to the development of the company's security technologies in different directions. My main focus is embedded security, including the security of the firmware in the company's various products, including smart cars.

What was your diploma about?
Building an effective implementation of the hashing function of GOST R 34.11-2012, the academic advisor is Taraskin Oleg Gennadievich.
Did you work during your studies? Where, what did you do?
Yes, first I worked as an intern at Intel Corporation for a year, I was involved in the implementation of the H.265 video codec, and after that, I worked for a few years at the "Aktiv" company, the "Rutoken" project. There I did many things, including developing cross-platform software and writing firmware for smart cards. I also wrote my diploma there, which also came in handy for my work, because the linear conversion in "Stribog" takes a lot of time on processors used in cryptographic keys.
Where do you work now, what position, what do you do at work?
Google, an information security engineer, securing the Google Chrome browser.
What do you consider your greatest achievement in life?
I am sure the greatest achievements are yet ahead. From what I've already accomplished, I'm very proud of our CTF team. In 2014 - 2015, when we were actively competing and were considered one of the best teams in the world. It subsequently impacted my career and the lives of me and the other guys, so it's very important to me.
If you go back to the 11th grade, where would you enter, what specialty?
MEPhI, Faculty of Information Security. No other options.

Why did you choose MEPhI?
The main reason for admission to MEPhI is the direction, which I was very interested in. Even from school, I was fond of information technology, programming, it is not taught, and had to seek information on the Internet or in books. And here is a whole university that offered for 5 years to study what I wanted. So the choice was obvious. I wanted to go to Moscow, I am from a small town.
What was your diploma about?
The diploma was on the topic "Reducing the time complexity of algorithms for homomorphic encryption over integers". Sounds like a song. The topic I chose myself when I first read an article about homomorphic encryption on habrahabr, interested me and there was not much research. I contacted our department to see if anyone was doing research in this area. My diploma was accompanied by Anna Vasilievna. Thank you very much for your great work, feedback, and support!
How do you apply the knowledge gained at MEPhI in your work?
To work I started since the 3rd year and the knowledge which was received in the first three years of training, have played to my advantage. At work, more practice is required, therefore here self-education during training at university is more important. The knowledge that they give you at university is important, but you still need to learn something yourself in order to quickly pump yourself as a specialist.
If you go back to the 11th grade, where would you go, to what specialty?
If I went back to the 11th grade, I would choose MEPhI and the direction of information security. Why not? It was cool there:) Thank you MEPhI for the improvement!

Why did you choose MEPhI?
I was looking for an institute specializing in information security. I liked the atmosphere at MEPhI and decided to choose it.
What was your diploma about?
The diploma was about discovering a special kind of rootkits that use virtualization technology in modern processors. Igor Korkin was my academic advisor.
Do you now maintain ties with the department?
After graduation I taught in the department for 3.5 years, at the moment I am the academic advisor of the students.
Where do you work now, in what position, what do you do at work?
I am currently working as risk analysis and assessment system developer at Barclays. My main duties are development and realization of mechanisms of analysis of economic risks in carrying out investment operations.

Anton in his master's thesis dealt with the issue of ensuring continuous monitoring of the security of web resources.
What has been achieved within the framework of the diploma?
Optimization of scanning web resources was achieved by implementing software that allows you to identify and analyze changes that occurred in web applications after a certain period of time. Such software works much faster than vulnerability scanners, because it does not scan resources, but only collects information about them, making legitimate requests and receiving an answer to them.
And what was the most difficult?
Understanding the Web device: how to exploit complex vulnerabilities in web resources in practice, how vulnerability scanners work and what you should pay attention to to optimize the scanning process.
What's next?
I plan to continue working in the field of security analysis with an emphasis on the web. As for the WRC, this topic can and should be developed.
Thanks
Thanks to my scientific supervisors - Alexey Kuznetsov and Mikhail Sidoruk, as well as to the teacher of the department, Sergey Vladimirovich Zapechnikov, who helped to significantly improve the diploma by asking competent questions and paying attention to the weaknesses of the diploma during the delivery of research and development.

As part of my thesis, I wrote a module for a static analyzer that would allow me to expand the possibilities of finding errors.
What is a static analyzer?
This is such a thing that allows you to find errors in the code without running the analyzed program. The analyzer builds program models based on the source code and looks for fragments in which an error may potentially occur during execution.
What has been achieved during the work on the diploma?
As a result, I wrote a plugin for Clang Static Analyzer, which allows the analyzer to find an error that it could not find before.
What was the most difficult?
The most difficult thing, of course, was that it was impossible to predict in advance what would happen at the end and what the deadlines for completing a particular stage of work would be, since most of the WRC is related to research. The plan was constantly changing due to the need to adapt to new results.
About the scientific supervisor:
My researcher, Igor Yurievich Korkin, helped me a lot. His moral and technical contribution to the work is invaluable.

We were given a list of topics that could be selected for research. I immediately liked the topic "Remote connection detection in the browser based on the analysis of the dynamics of keystrokes and mouse movements", since it is quite interesting to study biometric characteristics.
Why her?
I immediately imagined how I would collect data, build graphs, and investigate dependencies. In addition, the supervisor during our first conversation told me what I have to do and why this topic is relevant.
About the prospects of work:
The proposed system will help to increase the security of web applications from unauthorized access obtained through a remote connection.
About the scientific supervisor:
I want to thank my supervisor Garbuz Alina Vladimirovna. Thanks to her, it was fascinating to study the chosen topic. We also managed to build the work process so that everything could be completed and delivered on time.