Hi, I'm James.

I study computer science at the University of Wollongong and like to reverse engineer and patch limitations that annoy me

Experience

  1. Security Engineer Intern Incoming

    Nov 2026 – Feb 2027

    Atlassian

  2. IT Service Desk Officer

    Sep 2025 – Present

    University of Wollongong

    • Diagnose application crashes from core dumps and stack traces, including issues outside the usual Level 1–2 scope.
    • Found privilege-escalation bugs in internal software and worked with the developers to fix them.
    • Automate repetitive support tasks with Python and PowerShell.
    • Image/enroll and deploy PCs and Macs.

Projects

CVE-2026-84558

XNU reference-counting bug

A deterministic refcount bug in the macOS/iOS kernel that lets any unprivileged process trigger a denial of service. Reported to Apple and awarded US$1,000.

CVE-2026-84558 →

macOS · Code signing

Running iOS binaries on macOS

Patched the kernel, appinstalld and dyld to study how macOS decides what code it trusts and installs. Tools are open source: dyld-patcher, appinstalld-patcher, amfi-patcher.

GitHub →

iOS · Reverse engineering

MetricKitStub

A compatible reimplementation of Apple's MetricKit, built from reverse engineering the original, so device-compiled apps run in the Simulator.

GitHub →

Bluetooth · Swift

OpenNura

A replacement control app for Nura headphones. Reverse-engineered the undocumented BLE protocol from the Android app and packet captures, recovered the session key, and rebuilt the custom AES-128-GCM framing. Written in SwiftUI and CoreBluetooth.

GitHub →

Firmware

coreboot on the ThinkCentre M93p

Ported coreboot to a previously unsupported Lenovo desktop. It boots fully with only 70 KB of closed-source blobs (Intel MRC and a stripped ME).

GitHub →

Linux kernel

cachecontroller

A kernel module that turns off the CPU cache on a running x86_64 system.

GitHub →

Skills

Languages

  • C
  • Python
  • Swift
  • Objective-C
  • ARM assembly
  • Shell
  • Java

Tools

  • IDA Pro
  • Ghidra
  • Frida
  • LLDB
  • Wireshark
  • Burp Suite
  • Xcode
  • Ansible
  • Git
  • Podman
  • QEMU / KVM / libvirt

Platforms

  • macOS
  • iOS
  • Linux (RHEL)
  • Windows
  • Windows Server

Areas

  • Reverse engineering
  • Binary analysis
  • Kernel internals
  • Firmware
  • OS security
  • Network protocol analysis
  • Bluetooth / BLE
  • Embedded systems
  • Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos
  • SELinux
  • Virtualisation

Education

  1. Bachelor of Computer Science

    Mar 2025 – Nov 2027 (expected)

    University of Wollongong

    WAM 84.06