Contributing Authors

Vitaly Osipov (CISSP, CISA) is currently managing intrusion detection systems for a Big 5 global investment bank in Sydney, Australia. He previously worked as a security specialist for several European companies in Dublin, Prague and Moscow. Vitaly has co-authored books on firewalls, IDS, and security including Special Ops: Host and Network Security for Microsoft, UNIX and Oracle (ISBN: 1-931836-69-8) and Snort 2.0: Intrusion Detection (ISBN: 1-931836-74-4). Vitaly's background includes a long history of designing and implementing information security systems for financial institutions, ISPs, telecoms, and consultancies. He is currently studying for his second postgraduate degree in mathematics.

Niels Heinen is a security researcher at a European security firm. Niels has researched exploitation techniques and specializes in writing position independent assembly code used for changing program execution flows. While the main focus of his research is Intel Systems, he's also experienced with MIPS, HPPA and PIC processors. Niels, enjoys writing his own polymorphic exploits, wardrive scanners and OS fingerprint tools. His day-to-day job involves in-depth analysis of security products.

Nishchal Bhalla is a specialist in product testing, code reviews and web application testing. He is the lead consultant at Security Compass, providing consulting services for major software corporations & Fortune 500 companies. He's a contributing author to Windows XP Professional Security and Hack Notes. Prior to joining Security Compass, Nish worked for Foundstone, TD Waterhouse, Axa Group and Lucent. He holds a master's degree in parallel processing from Sheffield University, is a post-graduate in finance from Strathclyde University, and received a bachelor's degree in commerce from Bangalore University.