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​2025

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  • (April 14, 2025) I was excited to share a fireside chat at SANS Orlando alongside Ed Skoudis and Jeremiah Hainly.

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  • (January, 2025) I have started a new role as the Assistant Deputy Commissioner of Applied Cybersecurity and AI at the Georgia Department of Human Services. 

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​2024

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  • (Mar 24, 2024) I was honored to speak at SANS Orlando on the Featured Keynote Panel Discussion: Ask the Experts: How to Grow Your Success in Cybersecurity.

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  • (Mar 16, 2024) Our team was excited to host our Big Brother Capture the Flag Competition as part of our NSA GenCyber camp.

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  • (Mar 13, 2024)  I was honored to receive the Kerry Bruce Clark Award for Excellence in Teaching from Florida Tech.​

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  • (Feb 202, 2024) Led by my PhD student, Chris Fischer, our team hosted the 2024 Southeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Regional Qualifiers. The top 8 teams will head to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in March to compete.

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​2023

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  • (Dec 2023) Excited to announce that our FITSEC team placed #5 in the National Cyber League Team tournament.

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  • (Nov 19, 2023) My colleague Meredith Carroll and I were excited to wrap up our cyber fundamentals course with a hackable rocket launch and an $80,000 scholarship to the winner!

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  • (Nov 16, 2023) We were excited to host our Autonomous Cyber Exploitation (ACE). Congratulations to my student Marcus Feliciano, who led a team that had a 99% successful exploitation rate.

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  • (Nov 6, 2023) I was honored to speak at the National Cyber League College Pitch Day and share our program at Florida Tech.

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  • (Oct 28, 2023) I am excited to announce that six of our FITSEC students placed in the top 100 nationally at the Fall 2022 National Cyber League Individual Tournament. Congrats to Curtice Gough for placing #22 (out of 7,926 students.)

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  • (Oct 24, 2023) I am excited to have presented a guest lesson to the US Military Academy on Aarch64 Return Oriented Programming. (Github Link)

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  • (Oct 8, 2023) I am excited to announce that our FITSEC team, led by Chandler Hake and Alex Schmith, placed second in person at the B-Sides Orlando Sunshine CTF.

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  • (June 19, 2023) I am excited to have received a GenCyber Grant from the NSA/NSF for $149,724.55 to host a camp in Summer 25 for the next generation of Cybersecurity professionals.

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  • (April 21, 2023) I am excited that my students took 6th Place (standard division) and 7th Place (expert) division at the National Cyber League Team Tournament.

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  • (April 1, 2023) We are excited to have our students (Dylan Jessee and Dan Campos) get their papers accepted at IEEE CDS 2023 and Stian Olsen accepted at IEEE COMPSAC 2023 (27% acceptance rate.)

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  • (March 2, 2023) I am excited that our (Dane Brown, Jasmine Jackson, Suzanne Shmeelk, Bryson Payne, myself) article, "Compete to Learn: Toward Cybersecurity as a Sport," was accepted into The Journal of Cybersecurity Education Research and Practice (JCERP). Check it out [here].

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  • (Feb 26, 2023) Our FITSEC hosted our internal Big Brother Capture the Flag Competition on FITSEC.ctfd.io. I am excited this year to build a custom docker container to provide the competitors with the challenges and all the tools to succeed. You can ``docker pull tjoconnor/bb-ctf`` to see the challenges and try them out!

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  • (Feb 23, 2023) I renewed my GIAC GSE certification (along with 12x other GIAC certs simultaneously.) I was honored to be the #31st GSE in 2011 and still am 12 years later.

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  • (Jan 1, 2023) I am looking forward to the Spring semester, where I will be teaching our Vulnerability Research Class and a new class on Designing Cybersecurity Competitions, which culminates in our Space Heroes Capture the Flag Game.

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​2022

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  • (Nov 25, 2022) SpaceCoast Daily published an article about all the recent successes of our FITSEC cybersecurity team.

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  • (Nov 18, 2022) I am excited to announce that my students (Kourtnee Fernalld, Joshua Connolly, Blake Janes, Logan Suarez, Stephen Brustowicz, Alexander Schmith, and Curtice Gough) placed 1st nationally at the National Cyber League Team Tournament, moving to the #1 position in the Cyber Skyline Cyber Power Rankings​

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  • (Oct 13, 2022) I am excited to announce four of my students ( Isaiah Thomas, Dylan Jessee, Stephen Brustowicz, and Louie Orcinolo) placed 2nd nationally at the US Cyber Challenge Cyber Bowl competition. 

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  • (Sept 14th, 2022) I enjoyed briefing some previous 1st Special Forces Command colleagues about the cyber warfare lessons learned from the Ukrainian conflict. 

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  • (Sept 12, 2022) Four students (Dylan Jesse, Stephen Brustowicz, Louis Orcinolo, and Isaiah Thomas) advanced to the 2022 US Cyber Challenge Cyber Bowl Championships.

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  • (April 20, 2022) My first Ph.D. Ahmed Alhazmi defended his dissertation before Dr. Kepuska, Dr. Parenteua, Dr. Subasi, and myself. 

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  • (April 11, 2022) I was awarded the Student Government Association Professor of the Year Award at our 2022 Honors Convocation. My student, Tiffanie Petersen, earned the Outstanding Undergraduate Computer Scientist award.

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  • (April 8, 2022) My students ran the Remote Controlled CTF this past weekend at BSides Oklahoma. The event implemented a cybersecurity competition entirely on remote-controlled cars. We will publish the source code to GitHub shortly. 

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  • (April 4, 2022) My students ran the very successful Space Heroes CTF this past weekend. 2,077 competitors participated in the event. We published the source code for the challenges to Github.

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  • (March 2022) I'm excited that Ahmed Alhazmi and I had a paper accepted at IEEE COMPSAC 2022.

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  • (March  2022)  I'm excited to have another paper accepted at Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) that discusses our Reverse Engineering Course in our Florida Tech Cyber Operations concentration.​

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  • (February 21, 2022) Brevard Business News published a story about our team leading the US Cyber Games. 

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  • (February 2022) Florida Tech published a story about our work bringing cybersecurity education to high school students. 

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​2021

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  • (December 14, 2021) The Honorable Mr. Posey recognized our cyber operations concentration and victory in the National Cyber League on the congressional record. 

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  • (August 25, 2021) I was quoted in an article by Capital.com on the upcoming WhiteHouse Cybersecurity Summit. 

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  • (July 1, 2021) Our Florida Tech IoT S&P Lab is excited to announce that we were awarded a grant for $746,929.00 to identify "Educational Approaches and Curriculum to Engage and Educate a More Diverse Cybersecurity Workforce" for the Office of Naval Research. I am particularly excited to be able to fully sponsor my Ph.D. Student Zhenee Brown, as we pursue this important work. 

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  • (June 15, 2021) I am excited that four of our students competed in the US Cyber Challenge Cyber Quest eastern regionals and earned a spot in the top 3 teams, allowing them to advance to the finals.

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  • (May 2021) I am excited that five students in our FITSec Cybersecurity qualified at the US Cyber Challenge Cyber Quest to attend the Eastern Regionals Camp.

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  • (April 24th, 2021) Our Florida Tech IoT S&P Lab just reported two new vulnerabilities (CVE-2021-31793, CVE-2020-28713) in the Night OWL Doorbell Camera sold at Walmart. 

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  • (March 9th, 2021) I was recently interviewed on devicesecurity.io about the state of IoT Security. 

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  • (February 10th, 2021) I was interviewed on Fox35 about the Water Treatment Plant Hack in Oldsmar, FL—link to first and second interviews.

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  • (February 4th, 2021) Our recent vulnerability disclosures in security cameras and wireless doorbells were reported on by the Washington Post and Florida Today. Read the technical details on our blog post at ReFirm Labs.

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  • (January 6th, 2021) I talked on the ITSP podcast about the development of our cybersecurity lab and the direction of our cyber operations concentration at Florida Tech.

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  • (January 1st, 2021)  I've been selected to serve on the CSET '21 USENIX program committee

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2020

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  • (December 1st, 2020) Our FITSec Cyber Security Team was ranked #21/300 by the National Cyber League. 

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  • (August 1st, 2020) The Office of Naval Research awarded funding for a Florida Tech and the IoT Security and Privacy Lab for Multidisciplinary Approach to Internet-of-Things (IoT) Cybersecurity Research for $249,946

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  • (April 20th, 2020) My FITSec Cyber Security Club students placed 8th overall (out of 936) at the National Cyber League tournament.

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  • (April 6th, 2020) My student, Josh Connolly, just placed 3rd in his division (out of 1,536) at the National Cyber League tournament. 

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  • (March 31st, 2020) My student, Blake Janes, was just paid a bug bounty of $3,133.70 by Google for disclosing the bug identified in our work.

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  • (March 4th, 2020) My student, Blake Janes, had our paper: "Never Ending Story: Authentication and Access Control Design Flaws in Shared IoT Devices," accepted for publication at the IEEE SafeThings Workshop. 

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  • (March 1st, 2020) My students in our FITSec Cybersecurity club took 2nd Place (out of 25 teams) at the B-Sides Tampa Capture the Flag Competition. 

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  • (February 1st, 2020) I've been asked to serve on the SCYTHE Advisory Council to aid SCYTHE as they release an innovative new product in threat emulation. 

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  • (January 2020)  I've been selected to serve on the CSET '20 USENIX program committee. 

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2019

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  • (November 1, 2019) Students in our FITSec Cyber Security Club participated in the HiveStorm competition. 

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  • (October 26, 2019) Our FITSec Cyber Security Club students competed in the Florida Cyber Capture the Flag event.

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  • (August 15, 2019) I joined the team at Florida Tech, where I will serve as the Graduate Program Chair for our Information Assurance And Cybersecurity program and an assistant professor in the Computer Engineering and Sciences Department. 

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  • (May 2, 2019) NC State University published a press release about our smart-home sensor blinding work.  

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