Marc Espie

Expert

Team

Security and Systems

Site

Paris

Research Area

OpenBSD
  • Expert teacher in Unix and Defensive Security,
  • Practical knowledge of cryptography,
  • Senior developer in the OpenBSD project since 1998.

Current Teaching

  • Secure development 101 -- for 1st year engineers (slides),
  • Secure development follow-up course -- elective for 1st year engineers (slides),
  • Cryptography for the practical engineer -- for 3rd years apprentices,
  • Harmonisation, advanced shell, executable formats, and introduction to kernel source -- bringing up to speed 2nd year embedded systems and system & security students.

Development work and research

I've written most (over 90%) of the building and packaging tools of the OpenBSD system.

My focus is on practical deployment of simple, sane secure software with contributions to

  • the distributed ports building system of OpenBSD, which is highly reactive and used in production,
  • the package system of OpenBSD, which uses just-in-time signature checking to avoid overhead and keep secure,
  • privilege separation mechanisms such as completely denying a build user network access,
  • tools usability and simple interface to fellow developers who port software.

I've also dabbled in most parts of OpenBSD, including one device driver and misc. bug-fixes.

I mentor students in opensource development, the most recent example being Martin Grenouilloux contribution to libressl.

Technical conferences and code