Who am I?
My name is Stephen McKeon and I’ve been dabbling with computers since my teenage years. I’ve always had a fascination with computers and the capabilities they provide, starting with torrents and cracked games so I wouldn’t need a physical disk to play Warcraft or Age of Empires. In the early years, I infected, broke, and fixed my family’s computer more times than I can count. It wasn’t until 2012, while attending University at the Royal Military College (RMC) of Canada where I took my first programming course, that I began my true journey of understanding and love of technology. I subsequently studied Computer Engineering and graduated from the Regular Officer Training Program with a B.Eng in 2016.
I work as an Aerospace Engineering (AERE) Officer for the Canadian Armed Forces where I quickly discovered that there isn’t much overlap with my background education in computers and my day-to-day tasks. Though there is a mountain of requisite knowledge to be effective as an AERE, from generalized management and leadership to deeply technical and regulatory requirements in the realm of Airworthiness, I didn’t have passion working in this domain. So, to pursue what I was passionate about, in 2017 I started working on a Master’s degree in the cyber domain. The only catch, of course, was that my security research had to relate to aircraft. No catch at all, really.
In 2019, I was fortunate enough to acquire a military faculty position at RMC, where I instructed at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional certificate level. I completed my Master’s degree in 2021; my thesis project involved developing a method to acquire digital forensic artifacts from real-time systems embedded on aircraft.
I started a PhD from Queen’s University in 2022, and as of 2023, I work as a Cyber Vulnerability Assessment Engineer for the Directorate of Technical Airworthiness and Engineering Support (DTAES).
What will you find here?
- Capture the Flag event writeups,
- Random musings and reflections, and
- A place to gather my thoughts and keep track of accomplishments.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dean Attali for creating the Beautiful Jekyll template.