caption birth_place citizenship other_names image_size fields known_for image article_title name alma_mater
alexander sotirov sofia , bulgaria united states , bulgaria alex sotirov 200px computer science pwnie member award organizer , black hat briefings review board alexander sotirov.jpg alexander sotirov
 alexander sotirov university of alabama
alexander sotirov

alexander sotirov is a computer security researcher .
he has been employed by determina and vmware .
in 2012 , sotirov co-founded new york based trail of bits with dino dai zovi and dan guido , where he currently serves as chief scientist .
he is well known for his discovery of the ani browser vulnerability as well as the so-called heap feng shui technique for exploiting heap buffer overflows in browsers .
in 2008 , he presented research at black hat showing how to bypass memory protection safeguards in windows vista .
together with a team of industry security researchers and academic cryptographers , he published research on creating a rogue certificate authority by using collisions of the md5 cryptographic hash function in december 2008 .
sotirov is a founder and organizer of the pwnie awards , was on the program committee of the 2008 workshop on offensive technologies -lrb- woot ' 08 -rrb- , and has served on the black hat review board since 2011 .
he was ranked # 6 on violet blue 's list of the top 10 sexy geeks of 2009 .
