Life Story (Condensed Version)

Started programming at age 5 (circa 1988) using Color BASIC on a Tandy Color Computer 3.
Continued programming on an Amiga 500, between ages 8-14. Also learned simple TTL electronics during this time.
Meanwhile, gained experience with NetWare 286 and 3.x in elementary/high school.
Started using Linux and other free software in 1998, and have been using it ever since.
Was awarded a bachelor's degree in Electronic Systems Engineering in 2006.
Worked as a freelance computer programmer for a year, then joined Open Systems Canada Limited in 2007.
Moved from Regina to Ottawa in 2008.
Adopted the Python Cryptography Toolkit as upstream maintainer.
Continue to work on a wide variety of small free/open-source software.
Recently performed contract work in Ottawa for Interact Direct Marketing, Inc.^[1]
Seeking employment and/or contract work in the Ottawa area, especially at a small/medium-sized company or non-profit organization.

Education

September 2001 - May 2006: Bachelor of Applied Science, Electronic Systems Engineering
University of Regina, Saskatchewan
Co-operative Education Program; With Distinction
GPA: 84%

Employment Experience

May 2007 - Apr 2008	Information Technology Analyst,^[2] Open Systems Canada Limited, Regina, Saskatchewan Provided IT consulting to OSCL's customers; Developed internal systems. Developed a robust rsync-like customer data backup system. Recovered customer data manually after hardware RAID failure. Isolated a deadlocking bug in Paramiko (a Python SSH implementation). Discovered cryptographic weakness in random number generator in Paramiko.
Jan 2006 - Apr 2008	Freelance Software Developer and Consultant (self-employed) Ice Pillar Computing, Regina, Saskatchewan Developed software and provided advice for my customers. Installed and maintained LAMP servers. Performed Drupal 5->7 migration. Wrote screen-scraping software in PHP for the Bluepulse mobile platform. Developed an assortment of free/open-source libraries in PHP. Wrote C programs to process SHOUTcast streams and MP3 files.
May 2005 - Aug 2005	Embedded Systems Software Developer, Operating Systems Group,^[3] Research In Motion Ltd., Waterloo, Ontario Developed and maintained BlackBerry operating systems. Ported the BlackBerry bootloader/firmware loader to new hardware. Wrote and analyzed security-sensitive code in BlackBerry operating systems. Implemented an entropy-gathering cryptographic random number generator. Most work was done in C and ARM Thumb assembly language.
Sep 2004 - Dec 2004	Protocol Tester, Systems and Interoperability, Research In Motion Ltd., Waterloo, Ontario Performed protocol testing and wrote test automation software for GSM/GPRS BlackBerry handhelds. Refactored a portion of the control software for automated testing of BlackBerry handhelds. Assisted in the design of a more comprehensive automated testing framework for BlackBerry handhelds.
Jan 2004 - Apr 2004	Engineering Assistant, Research & Development, SaskTel, Regina, Saskatchewan Worked with TRLabs on several research projects. Improved an existing ultrasonic position-tracking system. Designed a (different) ultrasonic position-tracking system with a focus on increasing flexibility and lowering per-unit costs. Constructed a working prototype of a low-cost ultrasonic sensor device.
Sep 2001 - Apr 2003	Systems Analyst, Operations, Loose Foot Computing Limited (LFC Hosting), Regina, Saskatchewan Performed various programming, troubleshooting, system administration, and customer support duties. Provided technical leadership in software and infrastructure development. Developed hardware keyboard access control system using iButton key fobs.
Summer 2001	Network Security Administrator, Operations, Loose Foot Computing Limited (LFC Hosting), Regina, Saskatchewan Designed new LAN with Linux firewall for improved resilience against attack. Worked with customers and employees to resolve various technical issues.

Skills & Non-Employment Experience

Contributions to Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS)

Upstream maintainer of the Python Cryptography Toolkit.
Author of Good Enough Cryptography (gecrypt), a command-line password-based encryption utility designed to provide both strong confidentiality and strong authentication.
Maintainer of the xtoolwait package for Debian GNU/Linux.
Wrote several small programs and libraries (available from my website), including:
- Several web development utilities written in PHP.
- PySFTPd - Python SFTP server
- lfingerd - Finger protocol server designed with security in mind.
- FreeBASIC TV Batball - Pong-style game.
- libverisignfix - LD_PRELOAD hack used to work around VeriSign SiteFinder (circa 2003)
- TTFSampler - Generates sample sheets from TrueType fonts using Python and ReportLab.
Discovered and fixed important random number generation bugs in Paramiko (a Python SSH library used by the bzr revision control system). (CVE-2008-0299)
Discovered and fixed Blowfish encryption weakness in "dar" disk archive tool. (CVE-2007-3528)
Added maildir support to WMBiff.
Added fine page-table mapping support to the SkyEye ARM CPU simulator.
Many other minor contributions.

Electronics Engineering / Embedded Systems

Electronics: familiar with basic circuit design, state machines, microcontrollers, JTAG debugging
Programming (assembly language): ARM, Atmel 8-bit AVR, Intel 8051 (Dallas Semiconductor 80C390 variant), Intel IA-32 (x86), Motorola/Freescale MC9S12
Digital design: some (limited) experience writing VHDL for synthesis on Xilinx FPGA devices
3rd-year engineering project: With a colleague, developed a device that traces a 16x8-pixel monochrome image onto a flat surface using a red diode laser and a spinning mirror.
Final-year engineering project: With a colleague, developed a drop-in radio link encryption system for use with SCADA systems in the oil and gas industry. (Partially completed; exceeded time budget.)

Computers / Information Technology

Programming (familiar): assembly languages (see above), C, Python, PHP
Programming (somewhat familiar): C++, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Visual Basic, and others
Linux: since 1998; currently used as primary desktop and server operating system
Information security: SSH (familiar with the SSH 2 protocol), OpenPGP, Kerberos, network security
Home LAN: since 2000, various configurations; currently connected to a semi-private experimental overlay meta-network using OpenVPN and the Quagga BGP daemon
Telephony: some Asterisk VoIP (my home telephone connects to a VoIP line); some GSM/GPRS (layers 2 and 3)
IP networking: troubleshooting, security, routing, firewalls, VPNs, IPv6
Source control systems: CVS, Subversion, Perforce, Bazaar (bzr), Git
SQL databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite
Virtualization: Xen paravirtualization, VMware Workstation
Web technologies: HTTP, DOM XML, Python WSGI, Pylons, OpenID, some Flash

Awards & Scholarships

NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award, 2004
Dean's Honour List, Engineering, 2002, 2003, 2005
University of Regina Academic Silver Scholarship, 2003
Golden Key International Honour Society, 2002
IEEE (South Saskatchewan) Activity Award, 2002
University of Regina Centennial Merit Scholarship, 2001
University of Regina Entrance Scholarship, 2001
University of Toronto National Book Award, 2001
Saskatchewan Education General Proficiency Award, 2001
University of Saskatchewan Greystone Scholars Society, 2001

Brainbench Certifications

Job roles (awarded after passing designated tests in several individual areas):

Information Security Administrator
Web Developer (BCIP)

Top-10 rankings in the following individual areas:

(Brainbench Transcript ID#: 1616670. Details available at http://www.brainbench.com/.)

References

[1] Paul Jensen, VP, Product Development
Interact Direct Marketing, Inc.
401-246 Queen St
Ottawa ON K1P 5E4
+1 (613) 614-4612

[2] Michal Winsor
Open Systems Canada Limited
210-2332 11^th Ave
Regina SK S4P 0K1
+1 (306) 359-OSCL (6725)
[Email visible when JavaScript enabled]

[3] Rob H. Wood, Team Lead, OS Group
Research In Motion Ltd.
295 Phillip Street
Waterloo ON N2L 3W8
+1 (519) 888-7465 ext. 72066
[Email visible when JavaScript enabled]

A hyperlinked version of this résumé is available at
http://www.dlitz.net/resume/.

Last updated: October 23, 2008

Dwayne C. Litzenberger
 Key-signing key   - 19E1 1FE8 B3CF F273 ED17  4A24 928C EC13 39C2 5CF7
 Annual key (2008) - 4B2A FD82 FC7D 9E38 38D9  179F 1C11 B877 E780 4B45

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