lily anne hall curriculum vitae

personal

Pronouns they/them
Email lily.anne.hall@protonmail.com
Github github.com/lilyannehall

I’m a software engineer and security researcher with a background in distributed systems, digital privacy and applied cryptography. I have conducted security audits for organizations including Zcash, MetaMask, and Ethereum Foundation. I have authored security critical software for companies including BitPay and Storj. I am a contributor to many open source projects and conduct independent research on peer-to-peer networks and privacy technology.

professional experience

Newsroom Techincal Support Services, SecureDrop 2024-present

Freedom of the Press Foundation (contract)

Assist news organizations and journalists in migrating to the SecureDrop Workstation, including hardware selection, OS installation, SecureDrop Workstation setup, and onboarding.

Security Researcher, Pentester 2024-present

Radically Open Security (contract)

Develop security tools, code reviews, audits, pen tests and system design reviews while consulting for private clientele.

Senior Engineering Manager 2022-2023

Spruce Systems

Acted as a technical advisor and engineering manager to a team of six engineers responsible for Sign-in-with-Ethereum (SIWE). Established testing practices and security best practices.

Senior Engineering Manager 2020-2022

Eaze

Managed the consumer engineering department which included the web, mobile, and payments teams. Developed hiring rubrics, progression criteria and operational practices. Led the security working group – a cross-functional team responsible for organizational and application security practices.

Security Researcher 2017-2020

Least Authority (contract)

Conducted dozens of security audits for an ensemble of privacy focused technology projects. Authored reports and blog posts. Worked directly with clients to remediate vulnerabilities.

Principal Software Engineer, Architect 2015-2017

Storj Labs

Implemented the Storj protocol per its initial prototype specification. Co-authored the protocol specification for its first major stable release. Acted as the open-source project’s core developer and community liaison.

Staff Software Engineer, R&D 2012-2015

BitPay

Co-authored the second major release of the Merchant API and the first major release of the Payroll API – both designed with a capabilities-based security model. Led the research and development team to build internal tools and contribute to open source projects Bitcore, Bitauth and Copay

Presentation Layer Architect 2012

Razorfish

Senior Software Engineer 2010-2012

Bridgevine

Interface Engineer 2009-2010

LBi/Digitas

notable projects

Kadence 2019

Author, Maintainer

Complete implementation of the Kademlia distributed hash table that aims to effectively mitigate all vulnerabilities described in the S/Kademlia paper.

Documentation: tacticalchihuahua.lol/kadence
Repository: github.com/tacticalchihuahua/kadence

Granax 2017

Author, Maintainer

Complete client implementation of the Tor Control Protocol enabling developers to control a running Tor instance from Node.js.

Documentation: tacticalchihuahua.lol/granax
Repository: github.com/tacticalchihuahua/granax

Diglet 2017

Author, Maintainer

Fully encrypted reverse HTTPS tunnel server and client, enabling secure access to HTTP(S) servers running behind a restrictive NAT or firewall accessible from the internet.

Documentation: tacticalchihuahua.lol/diglet
Repository: github.com/tacticalchihuahua/diglet

KFS 2016

Author

Experimental sharding layer for LevelDB inspired by Kademlia’s network topology.

Experiment: lilyanne.me/research/Storj/kfs/docs
Repository: github.com/lilyannehall/research/

published research

TRON: Protocol Security Audit 2020

lilyanne.me/research/TRON/LeastAuthority-TRON-Protocol-Audit-Report.pdf

MetaMask: Lavamoat Plugin System Security Audit 2019

lilyanne.me/research/MetaMask/LeastAuthority-MetaMask-Plugin-System-LavaMoat-Audit-Report.pdf

MetaMask: Capnode Permissions System Security Audit 2019

lilyanne.me/research/MetaMask/LeastAuthority-MetaMask-Permissions-Capnode-Audit-Report.pdf

MetaMask: Mobile Wallet Security Audit 2019

lilyanne.me/research/MetaMask/LeastAuthority-MetaMask-Audit-Report.pdf

Blockstack: Stacks Investor Wallet Security Audit 2019

lilyanne.me/research/Blockstack/LeastAuthority-Blockstack-Wallet-Audit-Report.pdf

Cosmos: SDK Security Audit 2019

lilyanne.me/research/Cosmos/LeastAuthority-Cosmos-SDK-Audit-Report.pdf

Ethereum Foundation: ProgPow Algorithm Security Audit 2019

lilyanne.me/research/EthereumFoundation/LeastAuthority-ProgPow-Algorithm-Final-Audit-Report.pdf

Zcash: Sapling Implementation Security Audit 2019

lilyanne.me/research/Zcash/LeastAuthority-Zcash-Sapling-Implementation-RPC-Interface-Updated-Audit-Report.pdf

Zcash: Overwinter Specification and Implementation Security Audit 2018

lilyanne.me/research/Zcash/LeastAuthority-Zcash-Implementation-Analysis-and-Overwinter-Specification.pdf

Storj: a peer-to-peer cloud storage network 2016

lilyanne.me/research/Storj/Storj.Whitepaper.V2.pdf

leadership & advisory roles

Counterpoint Hackerspace 2014-2019

Executive Director

Co-founded a hackerspace in Atlanta, GA. Managed operational logistics, curriculum, and hosted a weekly counter-surveillance and threat modeling workshop.

Fluence Labs 2017-2018

Technical Advisor

Consulted during the early design phase to identify potential attack vectors related to the overlay network structure, incentive model and scalability concerns.

grants

Open Technology Fund, Red Team Labs (research grant) 2018

Onion Routed Cloud, Author

Awarded a research grant to fund a third party security audit of my open source privacy software project, Onion Routed Cloud (ORC).

public speaking

BlockCon 2017

Santa Monica, CA

Participated in a panel interview with representatives from Sia and Tahoe-LAFS about the state and future of decentralized cloud storage.

LibrePlanet 2017

MIT, Cambridge, MA

Spoke about the ecological impact of proof-of-work systems and made an appeal for various alternatives.

NodeSummit 2016

San Francisco, CA

Spoke at NodeSummit about Storj and gave a live demonstration of one of the first decentralized cloud systems using distributed ledger technology.

ConnectJS 2014

Atlanta, GA

Spoke at a conference for JS developers about using server-side JavaScript to implement a peer-to-peer consensus algorithm.

skills

languages JavaScript + Node.js, C++, Python, Rust, Solidity, Bash, HTML, CSS
software Linux, Git, Docker, Qubes, Metasploit, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, LevelDB

references

Available upon request