About Me

Hello, I’m Sebastian, a computer scientist with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a vocational training as an IT specialist for system integration. I’m currently pursuing my Master’s degree in Computer Science.

My Master’s Studies

I am currently pursuing my master’s degree at Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences, where I also completed my bachelor’s degree.

Projects During My Master’s Studies
  • Full-Stack Web Application: EventTom (1st Semester) EventTom is a web application for managing and selling event tickets. It was developed as part of the Software Architecture and Quality Assurance course using FastAPI and Vue.
  • Deployment of EventTom (1st Semester) In the Cloud Computing – Development and Operations course, I worked on automating the deployment of EventTom using Terraform and GitHub Actions on AWS.
Digital Forensics

In the IT and Media Forensics course, I gained insights into forensic investigation methods. Key topics included:

  • Network analysis with Wireshark
  • Storage media analysis using Autopsy and Volatility
  • Introduction to Reverse Engineering

My Bachelor’s Degree

I completed my Bachelor’s degree at the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences, where I gained a solid understanding of various core areas of computer science, including logic, algorithms and data structures, databases, and programming. The focus was on programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, C, and ARM Assembler.

Projects completed during my studies:
  • Password Security (1st semester): In a project, my group created a presentation on the topic of password security.
  • TODO Web-App (2nd semester): Together with a fellow student, I developed a TODO web application as a CGI script.
  • Reverse Engineering (3rd semester): Along with fellow students, I analyzed the communication of a KVM switch.
  • Format String Attacks (3rd semester): In the course “Security Basics,” I gave a presentation on format string attacks.
  • Image Management Web-App (3rd semester): As part of the course “Cloud Computing,” I created a web app for image management on AWS using Python, Boto3, and Bottle.
  • Cloud Computing with Terraform (3rd semester): I used Terraform in the “Cloud Computing” course to automate my tasks.
  • Quiz Web-App (4th semester): Development of a quiz web application using TypeScript and React, leveraging Material-UI and Jest.
  • 2D Space Shooter (4th semester): Programming of a 2D space shooter game in Python using the Pygame library.
  • Beer Database (4th semester): Creation of a beer database with Django and Python.
  • Image Search Site (4th semester): Development of an image search site using the vector database Weaviate and Flask in a group project.
  • Fictional Webshop (5th semester): Development of a fictional webshop using Spring and React in another group project.
  • 2D Puzzle Game (5th semester): Together with a fellow student, we developed a 2D top-down puzzle game using the Godot Engine.
  • Solar Panel Utilization Web-App (5th semester): In another group project, we developed a web application to optimize the use of solar panels, using Flask, Golang, Keycloak, PVGIS, and Next.js.

Many of these projects used Docker and GitHub Actions for automation.

Network Security:

In the 5th semester, I took the elective course “Network Security,” where I delved deeply into network attacks and defense mechanisms. The covered attack techniques included MAC flooding, MAC spoofing, ARP spoofing, DHCP starvation, DNS spoofing, and attacks on WiFi networks. I also learned how to set up a RADIUS server, use firewalls, and manage logs with Loki. I gained practical experience with the intrusion detection system (IDS) Snort and the SIEM system Wazuh.

Internship:

I completed my internship at KDAB, a company specializing in consulting and development for C++ and Qt applications. Here, I worked on further developing the GUI test framework Spix and deepened my knowledge in the area of software testing.

Bachelor’s Thesis:

In my bachelor’s thesis, I compared static vulnerability scanners for OCI-based container images using a self-developed web application. The application consisted of a Flask backend (with flask-restful, flask-sqlalchemy, and flask-migrate) and a React frontend in TypeScript (using Material-UI and react-query). Using this application, the following scanners were compared: Trivy, Clair, Grype, Snyk, Threat Mapper, Veinmind-tools, OpenSCAP, Dagda, Docker Scout, and Vesta. The results of the scanners were then evaluated using Python and Matplotlib. (To the evaluation code). The thesis is available at: https://doi.org/10.25933/opus4-3202

My Vocational Training

I completed my training as an IT specialist in system integration at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, where I specialized in Linux system administration.

In my first week, I replicated an Arduino project that monitored server room temperatures and transmitted the data to Zabbix, a monitoring system. I later presented this project at an internal technical conference.

During my first year, I worked on an apprentice project focused on application availability. I implemented HAProxy as a load balancer to distribute traffic across multiple Apache web servers. To ensure high availability for the MySQL database, I used Corosync and Pacemaker. Additionally, I explored network-based storage solutions, comparing NFS, iSCSI, and Fibre Channel, and studied various file systems, including ZFS, Btrfs, and Bcachefs.

In my second year, I gave my first lightning talk on Bcachefs, which unexpectedly led to my first podcast interview (only available in German) with RadioTux. I also attended training sessions on Graylog, a centralized log management tool, and Bareos, an open-source backup solution. Alongside my administrative tasks, I gained insights into web development using PHP and the Symfony framework. My vocational school studies also covered SQL and Java.

My regular responsibilities included network management (VLAN, LAG), LDAP and DNS administration, as well as automating tasks with Bash and Python scripts.

At the end of my second year, I taught myself SaltStack to manage configurations centrally. I versioned Salt states using Git and implemented a CI pipeline in GitLab to automatically test and run them in a test environment. This was also my first exposure to Docker.

In my third year, I introduced the Greenbone vulnerability management tool and used Jira for project management.

For my final project, I focused on migrating from VMware to Proxmox VE.

My School Time

During my school years, I developed simple GUI applications using Delphi in computer science classes.

I also created a website for a fictional web agency using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as part of an elective on web development.

My Private Projects

  • vuln2pve, a script that downloads VMs from Vulnhub to Proxmox.
  • packer-proxmox-debian, a Packer config that creates a Debian template for Proxmox.
  • hasura-jwt, a program that issues JWTs for Hasura.
  • time2boot, an Arduino project that starts a computer at a specific time.

Personal Life