The setup / what I did
Craig subcontracted me for firmware-security work in 2015. “Interesting crap,” as I’d put it. It centered on APC Smart-UPS devices and their management cards. It left a mark on the garage: a full-height rack with two rack-mounted UPSes, three to four standalone UPSes, and a box holding more than a dozen APC Smart-UPS management cards to test against.
Alongside the firmware work, I wrote a network packet-carver that fed captured packets into a big-data store, and started testing with Sqrrl. Sqrrl was a startup that had open-sourced its platform for working with Apache Pig, Hadoop, and related tooling. That testing led Sqrrl’s team to set up a call between me and Ely Kahn, Sqrrl’s co-founder.
Why it matters, the long thread
That Sqrrl and Ely Kahn introduction is a throughline. Ely and I later crossed paths at Nike, and again at SentinelOne.
Net result / what I learned
A reminder that a “small” side gig seeded both a reusable capability, the packet-carver and big-data pipeline, and a relationship with Ely Kahn that paid off years later.
Key people
- Craig Schultz subcontracted Paul for the firmware work.
- Ely Kahn, Sqrrl co-founder. Paul met him via the packet-carver and Sqrrl testing, and later crossed paths with him at Nike and SentinelOne. linkedin.com/in/elykahn
Technologies used
APC Smart-UPS firmware / management cards; a lab rack of UPS hardware; a custom network packet-carver; big-data store; Sqrrl, which was open-sourced; Apache Pig; Hadoop.