Benjamin Donnelly (polymath)
Benjamin Donnelly is an American-Canadian entrepreneur, inventor, hacker, speaker,[citation needed] software engineer and cryptographer, with contributions to the field of cybersecurity.
Early life[edit]
Donnelly was born in Spokane, Washington State.[citation needed] He was the first son to an American father Kevin Donnelly and Canadian mother Catherine.[citation needed] He was granted dual-citizenship with both countries.[citation needed] He was raised initially in the Spokane area before moving to the outskirts of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.[citation needed] His family eventually moved back out to Spokane around his 13th birthday.[citation needed] It was here that he began to gain notoriety for success in a variety of unrelated skill areas.[citation needed]
Education[edit]
In high school Donnelly participated in cadet organizations including the Civil Air Patrol and the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (AFJROTC).[1]
At around the age of 17 he was part of a CyberPatriot team from John R. Rogers High School[2] that reached the national semi-finals in their first year competing and the following year took second place nationally, and first place in all of the AFJROTC.[3][4][5][6][7][excessive citations]
Following his graduation from high school, he was invited to compete in the first annual SANS Netwars Tournament of Champions at SANSCDI 2012.[8] It was at this conference that Donnelly was offered a job working at Black Hills Information Security which he accepted.[citation needed] He was the champion of SANSFIRE Netwars 2013.[citation needed] He also went on to win the US Cyber Challenge's Western Regional CTF[clarification needed what is CTF?] with the highest team and individual national score.[9][10]
Donnelly sought to attend the United States Air Force Academy[citation needed] in preparation for a career as an aircraft pilot. He was accepted into the United States Air Force Academy Preparatory School[citation needed] but did not take up the place[citation needed] due to death of his father at age 45.[11] He attended four different schools[citation needed]
In his sophomore year at Eastern Washington University, Donnelly invented a novel cryptosystem designed for the secure storage of passwords. Ball & Chain is proposed as a replacement to the widespread practice of hashing passwords with a cryptographic hashing algorithm. He presented on Ball & Chain during his and Tim Tomes' DerbyCon 2014 talk "Ball and Chain: A New Paradigm in Stored Password Security".[citation needed]
He graduated in 2017.[12]
Early career[edit]
Donnelly was a firefighter in the Spokane area during and after college for a time.[vague][citation needed]
Computer security and cryptography[edit]
In 2013 while working at Black Hills Information Security, Donnelly worked on the "Active Defense Harbinger Distribution", a joint venture with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.[13][14] He became project lead, contributing up to 40% of the tooling within the distribution.[15] His contributions led to his inclusion as a co-author of the sub-field defining book Offensive Countermeasures: The Art of Active Defense.[16]
Donnelly created TALOS Active Defense (formerly MAD), an active defense framework much like a Metasploit for computer network defenders.[17] This project is owned by his company Promethean Information Security.[18]
Donnelly is a vocal opponent of "time hard" hashing algorithms such as Bcrypt. In many circles[where?] Bcrypt, Scrypt, and/or Argon2 are considered to be the best possible modern solutions to the problem of storing and retrieving passwords securely.[citation needed]
Entrepreneurship[edit]
Donnelly has started at least two companies[vague] to hold his projects and personal ventures. He is the founder and CEO of Promethean Information Security,[citation needed] a cybersecurity company that develops computer network operations technologies.[citation needed] It holds projects including Ball & Chain, Digikrieg.com, and TALOS Active Defense.[19][17]
Donnelly is also the founder of Literally Nothing LLC,[citation needed] a holding company for projects in various subdomains of software engineering and related topics.[citation needed] Recently he has released a new web venture under the name SecRate.io.[citation needed]
References[edit]
- ↑ "Teens help with Christmas Bureau child care | The Spokesman-Review". www.spokesman.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ "Rogers cyber teams advance in nationals | The Spokesman-Review". www.spokesman.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ Spokane, Greater (2012-04-05). "Our Cyber Champions". Greater Spokane Incorporated. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ "CyberSentinel March 2012" (PDF). March 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
- ↑ "Student CyberPatriots head to competition | The Spokesman-Review". www.spokesman.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ "Defense News" (PDF). northropgrumman.com. Retrieved 10 March 2019.
- ↑ "CyberSentinel April 2012" (PDF). April 2012. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
- ↑ "News, Tips, & Achievements Archive". weba.spokaneschools.org. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ uscc. "Podcasts". US Cyber Challenge. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ uscc. "U.S. Cyber Challenge and San Jose State University Hosted Successful Cyber Security Competition". US Cyber Challenge. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ "Kevin Donnelly Obituary". legacy.com. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
- ↑ "Commencement 2017" (PDF). ewu.edu. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
- ↑ professional, ChrisScottResearch Director at OODA LLCChris Scott is an experienced department of defense enterprise technology; DoD, business executive with a long running track record of fielding proven technologies into large organizations She interacts with senior; officials, I. C.; LLC, provides insights to our readers here She publishes atCTOvision com forOODA (2013-03-15). "DARPA'S Cyber Tools: We have had our hands on DARPA's distribution platform for cyber defense tools". CTOvision.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ "Brakeing Down Security Podcast: Active Defense and the ADHD Distro with Ben Donnelly". brakeingsecurity.com (Interview). Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ "Free 'Active Defense' Tools Emerge". Dark Reading. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ Strand, John; Asadoorian, Paul; Robish, Ethan; Donnelly, Benjamin (2013). Offensive Countermeasures: The Art of Active Defense (1st ed.). USA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781490945064. Search this book on
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Brakeing Down Security Podcast: 2015-044-A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD Active Defense World w/ Ben Donnelly!". brakeingsecurity.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
- ↑ PrometheanInfoSec (2018-09-04), Computer Network Defender's Toolkit, specializing in active defense techniques.: PrometheanInfoSec/TALOS, retrieved 2019-03-10
- ↑ "TALOS – Computer Network Defender's Toolkit, specializing in active defense techniques. – Security List Network™". Security List Network™. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
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