About

Hello! I'm Celil and I describe myself as a cyber security enthusiast. I'm working as Senior Director of Software Engineering at SonicWall.

My interest in hacking and cybersecurity actually began in the late 90s when I was just a child. I'm talking about the days when we connected to the internet with dial-up modems and eagerly tried to learn something on IRC channels. During those years, I got to know various individuals (Hurby, b4r0n, AhmetBSD, N4RK07IX, CTR) on various forums and IRC channels, and developing myself with their guidance eventually turned my curiosity for hacking into a profession.

In fact, I graduated in Economics from Marmara University. While I dabbled in hacking as a hobby, focusing on areas like reverse engineering and vulnerability research, my career goal was to become a successful academic in the field of Economics. However, fate had other plans for me. During my university years, I discovered many 0-day vulnerabilities in closed-source applications and I sold them to vulnerability purchase programs like iDefense, ZDI, SSD etc., and earning what I considered to be handsome sums fueled my passion for the field.

In my second year of university, I attended as a speaker to a hacker conference held in Poland where some prominent figures in the scene were speaker too. This experience completely changed my career plans. I decided to put my academic goals in Economics on hold and focus on cybersecurity, specifically vulnerability research.

I believe that I have contributed significantly to the cybersecurity community in Turkey by making valuable contributions in the field of vuln-research/exploit-dev relative to the time, organizing Turkey's first international hacker conference called NOPcon, and conducting various volunteer training sessions to increase interest and awareness in this field in Turkey.

I can also say that throughout my career, I have led many satisfying and innovative cybersecurity initiatives. I consider my most significant achievement to be the founding of TRAPMINE in 2016. Despite challenging conditions and without much capital support, we developed a successful product that could compete with many major vendors. Ultimately, we achieved a successful exit to one of the largest and most reputable cybersecurity vendors in the US in September 2023.

I can say that I have expertise in the fields of Reverse Engineering, Vulnerability Research, Exploit Development, and SCADA Security in the cybersecurity domain. Throughout my career, I have enjoyed reading assembly code, debugging closed-source applications with WinDbg, and hunting for vulnerabilities. These skills and experiences have contributed significantly to my career in the cybersecurity industry.

Additionally, I really enjoy attending cyber-secuiry conferences around the world either as a speaker or listener. Some of the conferences I have been a speaker includes:
  • Power of Community 2015, South Korea
  • Code Blue 2014, Japan
  • Swiss Cyber Storm 3 , Switzerland
  • CONFidence 2010 , Poland
  • Defcamp 2014, Romania
  • Kuwait Infosec 2013, Kuwait
  • NOPcon , Turkey