Chris Valasek

Chris Valasek was a Senior Director with General Motors, and was formerly a computer security researcher with Cruise Automation, a self-driving car startup previously owned by GM.

Career Prior to his current employment, he worked for:

Cruise (autonomous vehicle) IOActive Coverity Accuvant IBM

Education Valasek holds a Bachelors in Computer Science from University of Pittsburgh. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Security Research

Microsoft Windows Valasek has publicly demonstrated many security vulnerabilities, with particular focus on Microsoft Windows heap exploitation.

His 2009 presentation "Practical Windows XP/2003 Heap Exploitation" at Black Hat presented a novel approach to gaining elevated access in a Windows environment.

Later research, such as his 2010 paper "Understanding the Low Fragmentation Heap: From Allocation to Exploitation" demonstrated ways to circumvent vendor mitigations to the approaches outlined in his prior work.

Automotive Security In 2013, he and Charlie Miller demonstrating a number of attack vectors against ECUs in automotive control networks. Together with Miller, they have produced a survey of remote attack surfaces in then-current model year automobiles, an important first step in establishing the state of the art of automotive security and safety research.

Summercon Chris has been involved with the conference as part of the Summercon planning committee since 2003. He is currently listed as Chairman Emeritus on the Summercon Organizer page.