Matthew Markfort's Index Page

Introduction

Welcome to my page! My name is Matthew Markfort, and I am currently at Metropolitan (Metro) State University studying B.Sc. in Computer Science.

I started my post-secondary education at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where I started learning the B.Sc. in Astronomy; however, my mathematic skills were poor (at the time). As a result, I pivoted into Computer Science, but I did not stay at Mankato long. Ultimately, I was forced to leave due to financial reasons. In the interim, I picked up work in logistics at Griffin & Company logistics, and I did their receivables for 7 years. After that, I began work at Kudelski Security -- then Milestone Systems, and I worked there for 7 years as well.

My hobbies include:

• Drawing
• Amateur Astronomy
• Learning Swedish and Japanese
• Applying computer languages

I love learning operating systems. If you're ever curious, I can rattle them off, but as a simple list, I have experience operating and maintaining GNU/Linux (Debian, Fedora, CentOS, and Arch), BSD "UNIX" (Free, Open, Net, and DragonFly), Windows (Windows 3.1 through 11 as well as Windows Server 2003 R2 through Windows Server 2022), macOS (Snow Leopard through Ventura), F5 BIG-IP, Juniper JunOS, and Fortinet. On ocassion, I have also dabbled in the kernel space for driver questions.

I love programming languages, usually. There are some programming languages, like Haskell, which just feels like brain melt to me, but otherwise, a few programming languages that I leverage often include: C/C++, Java, Rust, Python, Perl, Ruby, and Web development (like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS5).

I am security adept. I have a cumulative 14 years in providing technology responses, especially as it relates to security.

While working at Griffin & Company Logitics, I identified a GameOver Zeus node causing our mail to be blacklisted. To find the node involved with botnet activity, I had to comb through packet captures on the Domain Controller. I didn't have much to go on, except I suspected that erroneous-looking DNS provided great insight into identifying its queries, which ultimately led me to finding the node. I also confirmed that it was a single node by skimming the traffic, which matched the expectations of the botnet.

While at Kudelski Security, I worked with and maintained firewalls, SIEMs, and IDS technologies. A few brands that I worked with are as follows: Fortinet, Palo Alto NGFW and Panorama, F5 BIG-IP, LogRhythm SIEM, McAfee (Nitro) SIEM, Splunk ESM, Elasticsearch-LogStash-Kibana, RSA Netwitness, Claroty, CrowdStrike FalconHost, Illusive Networks, and Tenable.IO.

What Are You Doing Now?

1. Between Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 semesters, I read through The Rust Programming Language (2e), and I successfully created luca - A LCA/LUA Unpacking Utility.

2. I continue to contribute compute cycles of my Ansible-Arch-RaspberryPi cluster to Universe@Home

3. I currently operate an AllSky instance on a RaspberryPi, and I already have over 14 nights of photos, keograms, and startrails to look over.