James Young

Systems programmer and reverse engineer.
CS student at UOW. Interested in Apple platform internals, Unix internals and firmware.

github.com/jamesy0ung james@foreveryoung.id.au LinkedIn

About

Most of my time goes into tinkering with software and making it do things the authors didn't want it to do. I've patched the kernel, appinstalld, and dyld to run unsigned iOS binaries on macOS, reimplemented MetricKit so device-built apps work in the simulator, and given a talk on Apple platform RE at a UNSW Security Society conference.

Outside of Apple stuff: I ported coreboot to unsupported hardware so I could boot with only 70kb of closed source code, wrote a kernel module to disable CPU cache at runtime on a live x86 system, and broken a few commercial DRM implementations. I've also been using Linux since I was 8 and like to tinker with both automation of systems administration tasks and tinker with kernel internals.

Projects

dyld-patcher
Patches Apple's dynamic linker to bypass calls to AppleMobileFileIntegrity, letting arbitrary iOS binaries run on macOS.
Python · macOS
appinstalld-patcher
Patches the app install daemon to spoof a valid Team ID to allow creation of a WrappedBundle.
JavaScript (Frida) · macOS
MetricKitStub
Reimplementation of Apple's MetricKit from scratch, lets App Store apps run inside the iOS simulator.
Objective-C · iOS
coreboot port
Open-source firmware on previously unsupported hardware.
C · Firmware
cachecontroller
Linux kernel module that disables CPU cache at runtime on a live x86_64 system.
C · Linux
UOWBorderAuth
Native macOS app in Swift that automates university network authentication.
Swift · macOS

Experience

IT Service Desk Officer
University of Wollongong · Sep 2025 – Present
  • Level 1–2 support on Windows and macOS. Active Directory, Group Policy, network troubleshooting.
  • Wrote Python scripts to automate repetitive support tasks.
  • Found and reported 0days in internal software.
Bachelor of Computer Science
University of Wollongong · 2025 – 2027 · WAM 84.13

Skills

Languages

  • C
  • Python
  • Swift
  • Objective-C
  • ARM Assembly
  • Shell

Tools

  • IDA Pro
  • Ghidra
  • Frida
  • LLDB
  • Burp Suite
  • Ansible
  • Git

Areas

  • Reverse engineering
  • Kernel internals
  • Firmware bring-up
  • OS security
  • Binary analysis