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Hi, I’m Erin Freck

I am a graduate student in the FoRTE and ITSO labs at Virginia Tech. I recently graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. Computer Engineering also from Virginia Tech. In an effort to pursue my passion for cybersecurity, I decided to continue my education to get a M.S. Computer Science with a certificate in Cybersecurity. My journey started on the blue team side of things, but my interests have taken me towards red team work. Specifically, I am passionate about offensive non-kinetics and vulnerability research.

Contact Me


Education

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    Virginia Tech -

    May 2025

    M.S. Computer Science

    Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity

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    Virginia Tech -

    May 2023

    B.S. Computer Engineering - Summa Cum Laude

    Minors in Computer Science and Cybersecurity


Honors

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    Phi Beta Kappa

    Liberal Arts and Sciences

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    Tau Beta Pi

    Engineering

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    Eta Kappa Nu

    Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Certifications

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    CrowdStrike Certified Falcon Responder

    August 2024

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    CrowdStrike Certified Falcon Administrator

    July 2024

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    GIAC Foundational Cybersecurity Technologies

    May 2024

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    Cybersecurity Club -

    Jan 2023 - Current

    Aug 2023 - Current | Treasurer

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    BOLT Electric Motorcycle -

    Oct 2019 - May 2023

    Aug 2022 - May 2023 | Controls Lead

    Aug 2021 - May 2022 | SEC Representative

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    Society of Women Engineers -

    Aug 2019 - May 2023

    Aug 2022 - May 2023 | President

    Aug 2021 - May 2022 | Treasurer

    Aug 2020 - May 2021 | Evening with the Industries Chair

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    Galipatia Living Learning Community -

    Aug 2019 - May 2022

    Aug 2021 - May 2022 | Data Committee Liasion

    Aug 2020 - May 2021 | Mentor and Committee Member

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    Fencing -

    Apr 2022 - Current

    Sabre

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    Music Ensembles -

    Aug 2019 - May 2022

    Violist

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    VTHunt -

    Apr 2020 - Current

CrowdStrike

Falcon Complete

June 2024 - August 2024

At CrowdStrike, I worked as a front line analyst on the Falcon Complete team to assist cutomers with making changes and updates to their Faclon Complete managed systems. Additionally, I remediated hosts from commodity malware and trained to respond to Active Hands-on-Keyboard incidents and Active Directory based attacks. Finally, I contributed to automated systems to improve detection response and remediation times.

faclon complete console powershell
MITRE

Cyber Threat Intelligence and Adversary Emulation

May 2023 - August 2023

At MITRE, I worked with the MITRE ATT&CK Evaluations team to develop and improve malware used in past and upcoming rounds of evaluations. One project involved updating a Linux backdoor. This consisted of adding a handler to a C2 framework, updating the implant to be persistent and user configurable, creating and evaluating custom ethernet packets using Wireshark, and analyzing an example malware sample using Ghidra. Additionally, I sat in on a cyber exercise which evaluated deception technologies, and placed third in an intern embedded systems capture the flag competition.

rust go python ghidra wireshark
Google

Event Threat Detection

May 2022 - August 2022

On Google Cloud’s Event Threat Detection Team, I initially worked on building customer-configurable detection modules to identify IAM-based privilege escalation attacks. After finishing the project two months early, I picked up a project that would allow security engineers to run YARA-L and SQL rules against Google Cloud Platform logs in real time. I specifically worked on parsing log data out into a table so commands could be run against them. As of now, the custom module code is in production.

java c c++ go sql
Google

Cross Media Measurement

May 2021 - August 2021

On Google Ad’s Cross Media Measurement Team, I collaborated with Facebook, Amazon, and other companies to measure ad views across various media platforms to provide users with more diverse ads and advertising companies with more accurate data. I specifically worked on securing user data. This involved building a library to encrypt identifier-payload pairs for a Panel Match Batch Lookup Workflow. Encryption consisted of methods such as AES, HKDF, SHA256, and Deterministic Commutative Encryption. As of now, the code is in production.

c++ bazel git

FoRTE
The FoRTE lab focuses on research that challenges the intersection of hardware and software. With a focus in security, systems, and architecture, the lab is known for its work in fuzzing. Under the direction of Dr. Matthew Hicks, the research I conduct with this lab centers around how hardware can be fuzzed more efficiently and with better coverage. Specifically, I will be working on a better implementation for fuzzing processors.

IT Security Office
The IT Security Office is the office that oversees Virginia Tech’s technology, services, and security. For the last two years, I have worked with the ITSO, under the direction of Randy Marchany, to develop a website that provides researchers, faculty, and other users a simple way to figure out where to best store their data securely. Now, I am assisting in red team work against university infrastructure.