Our Staff

At Nautilus Institute, we've built a fantastic team of scientists, developers, hackers, and that one guy who keeps yelling at everyone because their code doesn't automatically build in the CI system.

• 
  Thomas Windmill
  Chief Executive Officer
  Infrastructure

  Thomas used to capture flags, but now he works on the supply side. He has been coming to DEF CON since DEF CON 14 and got hooked on CTF in the Kenshoto era. While he likes deep, complicated binary challenges, he is also working on how to make the game interesting and engaging to other parts of the cybersecurity community.

• 
  fuzyll
  Chief Operations Officer
  Infrastructure
  Production

  fuzyll has been playing in and running CTFs since 2010. His highest finish in DEF CON Finals as a player was 2nd in 2013 with Men in Black Hats. He was previously an organizer and challenge author for Ghost in the Shellcode (2012-2015), DEF CON (2017), and Hack-a-Sat (2020-2021).

• 
  endeavor
  Infrastructure Lead
  Challenge Author

  endeavor likes computers.

• 
  Hoju
  Production Lead

  Hoju has participated in CTFs since 2007 and has been stoking the fires of his love/hate relationship with Vegas since DEF CON 15. He has written some challenges here or there, but his primary focus has been on developing CTF game visuals in Unreal Engine and attempting to be a DJ for a weekend to make sure attendees are thoroughly entertained.

• 
  mike_pizza
  Challenge Lead
  Challenge Author

  The man. The legend. The nose.

• 
  fish
  Challenge Author

  fish has been playing CTFs since 2010 and is a diehard reverse engineer for anything without source code.

• 
  HJ
  Challenge Author

  HJ has been involved with CTFs for a while. Like thing2, he has no idea what he is doing or where he is going but tries to at least enjoy the journey even if it stresses him out.

• 
  itszn
  Challenge Author
  Infrastructure

  There is no code like a bytecode

• 
  jay
  Challenge Author

  Sardine enthusiast.

• 
  Lightning
  Challenge Author

  Lightning has been programming since she was 10, is known for creating the most insane CTF challenges, and is the author of the cLEMENCy architecture. She started going to DEF CON in 2011 because of CTF, has become a DEF CON DEVOPS Goon, and is part of the Whiskey Pirates group.

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  perribus
  Challenge Author

  perribus should probably be finishing her challenge right now...

• 
  thing2
  Challenge Author

  thing2 has written challenges for multiple CTF’s and played in several. He really doesn’t know what he’s doing and just meanders through life, confused and afraid.

• 
  Vito
  Infrastructure

  Vito is a world-recognized CTF thought leader with over ten succesful CTF games run, speeches about CTF on multiple continents, and a pretty good showing at the 35C3 Junior CTF.