Stefanos Flokos

Stefanos Flokos

Automotive Cybersecurity Engineer

Automotive Cybersecurity Engineer with a strong technical foundation in software development and system hardening. Specialized in securing embedded automotive architectures through Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment.

My objective is to contribute to the safety and security of connected vehicles by ensuring compliance with industry standards and implementing robust defense mechanisms against emerging automotive cyber threats.

[email protected]

Professional Experience

Automotive Cybersecurity Engineer

Software Competitiveness International
Oct 2024 - Present Athens, Greece
  • Performed Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment (TARA) per ISO/SAE 21434 across Over-the-Air (OTA) update and Telematics Control Unit (TCU) architectures for connected-vehicle programs, covering embedded Android infotainment and Linux-based ECUs.
  • Analyzed and triaged Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) affecting the automotive software stack (Android, Linux kernel), assessing exploitability and defining mitigation strategies.

Compulsory Military Service

Hellenic Armed Forces
Nov 2023 - Aug 2024 Greece / Cyprus
  • Fulfilled mandatory national service obligation.

Junior Software Developer

Business & Bytes Ltd
Sep 2023 - Oct 2023 Athens, Greece
  • Developed a Windows application for remote server monitoring with custom rules for system/database checks (.NET Framework, SQLite).
  • Created a secure web interface for rule status reporting and business statistics (Postgres, Razor Pages, Docker).

Software Developer Intern

Business & Bytes Ltd
Oct 2021 - Apr 2022 Athens, Greece
  • Led the frontend development team for a COVID-19 health monitoring system (European funded project).

Education

University of Piraeus

Department of Informatics

MSc in Cybersecurity and Data Science
2025 - Present Specialization: Embedded Systems Security & Reliability (ESSR)
Program details
Master Thesis (in progress): Reliability of ML-DSA Hardware Implementation Under Fault Injection

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Department of Informatics and Telecommunications

BSc in Computer Science
2018 - 2023 Minor in Software
↳ Conforming to ACM “Computer Science” curriculum Department

Certifications

AI Practitioner

AIF-C01 AWS Issued: Jun 2026
AWS Certified AI Practitioner

Cloud Practitioner

CLF-C02 AWS Issued: Jan 2025
AWS Cloud Practitioner

Security+

SY0-701 CompTIA Issued: Aug 2024
Security+

Technical Background

Systems Programming & Cryptographic Engineering

C, LLVM, Linux
  • Cryptographic Engineering: integrating secure libraries and cryptographic operations into embedded firmware on STM32 / Zephyr RTOS, for resource-constrained environments.
  • C & Operating Systems: systems programming in C covering process management, IPC (semaphores, shared memory) and a custom heap-file storage engine.
  • Cross-Platform Development: portable C/C++ builds and debugging with the LLVM/Clang toolchain across architectures.
  • Secure Software Development: applying secure-coding practices and security controls across the software development lifecycle.

Offensive Security & Exploitation

C, Assembly, Python
  • Binary & Cryptographic Exploitation (CTF): memory-corruption exploitation (stack overflows, format strings), exploit development against remote C services and cryptographic attacks such as padding oracles.
  • Application Vulnerability Assessment: white-box review of a production LMS (OpenEclass) - XSS, SQL injection, CSRF.
  • Penetration Testing: network and system-level methodology and tooling, privilege escalation and pivoting.
  • Malware Analysis & Digital Forensics: static and dynamic analysis of malicious binaries; disk and memory forensics for incident reconstruction.

FPGA & Hardware Security

VHDL, Vitis HLS, Vivado
  • RTL Design: register-transfer-level design in VHDL, through synthesis and on-board validation in Vivado.
  • High-Level Synthesis: raising C/C++ to RTL with Vitis HLS.
  • Hardware Attacks & Countermeasures: fault-injection (voltage/clock glitching) and side-channel (power/EM) analysis; countermeasures with redundancy, error-detecting codes and masking.
  • Reliability Engineering: fault-tolerant design and dependability assessment of embedded and FPGA-based systems.

Infrastructure & Web

Linux, Docker, Nginx, .NET, Angular, React
  • Self-Hosted Server: hardened Linux server with iptables network segmentation and Docker service isolation.
  • Secured Deployments: containerized hosting behind Nginx for OpenASC (open-source automotive security catalogs) and CodebaseIt (personal tech blog).
  • Full-Stack Development: side projects spanning .NET back-ends and Angular / React front-ends.

Skills

Automotive
ISO/SAE 21434TARAUNECE R155/R156Zephyr OSSTM32Android Automotive
Programming
CC++PythonAssemblyBashC#
Hardware / FPGA
VHDLVitis HLSVivadoUltraScaleArtix-7Fault InjectionSide-Channel Analysis
Infra & Web
DockerPostgreSQLNginx.NETAngularReactGit
Spoken
Greek - NativeEnglish - ProfessionalFrench - Basic
Soft Skills
Quick-learning Adaptability Teamwork Persistency in Problem Solving Analytical & Critical Thinking Attention to Detail Responsibility & Consistency