Software
I'm currently a security engineer at Zopa, a small British bank founded in 2005. In brief, my role involves making sure that Zopa deploys securely written software; this involves internal security testing, training, code review, and coordinating external security tests.
I previously worked at Netcraft, an internet security company based in Bath. At Netcraft, I worked on a wide range of projects, including anti-phishing software, email security solutions and penetration testing. Most of the code I have written in recent years has been in Perl, although I've occasionally had reason to use Javascript and PHP as well.
In 2012, I graduated with an MEng in Computing from Imperial College London. My interests at the time roughly lay in logic, network security and bioengineering: my dissertation involved the application of proxy re-encryption to social networks.
In a more general sense I am very interested in online privacy, from technical, social and economic perspectives.
I've run a number of small websites and projects online over the last few years. Of these, the two that are generally the most liked (despite definitely not being the most polished) are The Daily Aww, a website that sends you one photo from r/aww every day, and Brother Francis, an interface to a receipt printer that lives in my living room.
History
From 2014 onwards, I have been working towards a MSc in History from the University of Edinburgh. My interests currently lie in cultural history, particularly the field of emotions history. Emotions history looks at how cultural cues, economics and politics come together to define the 'emotional repertoire' of a particular period. For example, how did the British 'stiff upper lip' culture emerge in the early 20th century? Or how did people in the Soviet Union react to the Stalinist demand of constant joyousness in the late-1930s USSR?
In 2015, I won the University of Edinburgh ODL Scholarship (in its inaugural year) for my work on the course. I also presented a paper on the relationship between masculinity and grief in Victorian spiritualism at a postgraduate psychology conference at Middlesex University.
In 2016, I presented a paper on the development of political themes in 19th-century Japanese prints at a conference at the University of Brighton.
Other Projects
For everything else, there's my projects site. Most interesting at the moment is probably my 2016 visit to the catacomb saints of Germany and Austria.
Contact
If you would like to get in touch about my projects, writing, or anything else, my email address is feroz@argh.in. I can also be found at Twitter, as @ferozsalam.