Feross Aboukhadijeh

Education

Stanford University

• Master's Degree, Computer Science [in progress]
• Bachelor's Degree, Computer Science [2008 - 2012].

Projects

I enjoy making software. Read my latest code. Here are some projects I built:

PeerCDN 2013 - present

• A peer-to-peer CDN, using only JavaScript!

Study Notes 2006 - 2008; 2013

• Used by 300,000 students each month.
• Originally built when I was age 16. Revamped in 2013.
• Offers free study materials to high school students taking AP classes and preparing for SAT and ACT exams.

Instant.fm 2011 code

• The easiest way to make a music playlist to share with your friends.
• Built in 3 months, with friend Jake Becker, as Stanford senior project.
• Read about the technology we used to build the site.

YouTube Instant 2010 code

• 1,000,000 visitors within 10 days of launch, and personal job offer from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley. [Read more]
• Featured in New York Magazine, Washington Post, NY Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Mashable, Engadget, TechCrunch, Fast Company, All Things D, VentureBeat, LifeHacker, PC Magazine, etc. [Read more]
• Built in 3 hours using YouTube API and JavaScript.

iBoard 2010 unreleased

• iBoard was a multi-user drawing app that let people from anywhere in the world draw together in real-time.

FreeTheFlash Entertainment 2004 - 2006

• Built when I was 14.
• 3,000,000 page views and 600,000 unique visitors in 2006.
• Featured 100s of user-submitted Flash animations, games, soundboards, audio, and videos.

Work Experience

Quora — Software Engineer Intern Summer 2011

• Developed and launched the embedded video feature.
• Ported lots of Python code to Scala code.

Facebook — Software Engineer Intern Summer 2010

• Developed and launched Facebook Groups to 500 million Facebook users, on a team of only 5 engineers in 4 months.
• Implemented new HTML email design, incoming email handler, and member management UI.
• Facebook Groups offers users a shared space to share stuff, chat, and keep in touch with small groups of friends.

Stanford Computer Science — Section Leader Jan 2009 - Dec 2011

• Taught computer science for 6 quarters to students in the CS 106A Programming Methodology and CS 106B Programming Abstractions courses.
• Led weekly discussion section with about 10 students on current class topics to complement professor’s lecture, graded assignments, and tutored students.

Intel — Web Developer & Videographer Summer 2007 & Summer 2008

• Worked at Intel in high school, for two summers
• Built an internal video portal to improve manager-employee communication (major Intel IT initiative)
• Built web app to help engineers quickly create customer support tickets from large error report database
• Redesigned internal IT website to improve usability

Research

FillDisk.js — Proof of Concept Deb 2013 code

• Demonstrated an attack that allows any website to have unlimited storage space on a visitor's computer.
• Works in Chrome, Firefox 3.5+, Safari 4+, IE 8+.

Using the HTML5 Fullscreen API for Phishing Attacks — Proof of Concept Oct 2012 code

• Demonstrated a phishing attack that can be performed with the W3C JavaScript fullscreen API.
• Emulates user's current browser, OS, and screen size to convince them they are on trusted SSL site.

WireSheep — Original Tool Nov 2011 code

• News Feed of activity on your local network
• WireSheep lets you sniff packets on an open WiFi network. Instead of just stealing login cookies, like FireSheep, it lets you see traffic in realtime, like Wireshark. WireSheep shows you each user on the network and all the HTTP requests they’re making.
• Built with teammates John Heisey, Nikil Viswanathan, and Daniel Posch.

CMSploit — Original Research Nov 2011 code

• Nearly 1% of websites built with a content management system (like WordPress or Joomla) are unknowingly exposing their database password to anyone who knows where to look.
• Temp files created by text editors may still linger after editing is finished, exposing the configuration file and database credentials to attackers.
• I wrote an automatic program to test for the prevalence of this issue across the wider web. I tested the top 200,000 websites and found that 0.77% of websites running a CMS have publicly-visible config files and database passwords.

Adobe Flash Remote Webcam Exploit — Original Research Oct 2011 code

• I discovered a vulnerability in Adobe Flash that allows any website to turn on your webcam and microphone without your knowledge or consent to spy on you.
• It uses user interface redressing (clickjacking) to trick the user into doing a series of four clicks which remotely enables their webcam.
• The exploit was covered on CNET, Wired.com, The Register, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC World, Yahoo! News, ZDNet, The Inquirer, and Computer World.

Automatic Retargeting of Webpage Content — Stanford Computer Science — Human-Computer Interaction Lab Summer 2009

• We built an application for casual web designers to explore possible designs for their website.
• The designer selects a site they like and they can apply it's page layout and styles to their own site.

Organizations

Stanford Association for Computing Machinery — President 2008 - 2012

• President for 3 years, grew club to 700+ members. Built club website.
• Planned 100+ campus-wide events, including faculty events, LAN parties, and tech talks.

High School Website Team — Lead Programmer 2006 – 2008

• Built and maintained school website.
• Fixed teachers' hardware and software problems for 5 hours / week.

High School Key Club — Webmaster & "Techie" 2005 – 2008

• Helped coordinate volunteer service events for 200+ club members and produced movies/slideshows of the events.
• Built club website (offline but mirrored; I'm keeping the site alive because of all the good memories I had in the club)

Sites I Built

I started designing websites at age 13, when I first learned HTML. Since then, I've built lots of sites, mostly for myself, but a few for organizations that I like:

AMENDS 2012

• Stanford student initiative to help promising youth in the Middle East and United States to learn from each other, through TED style talks, and share their ideas and experiences with the world.

Hunger and Homelessness Auction 2010 - 2011 [site offline]

• In 2010, we used this site to run the Stanford Charity Auction.
• In 2011, we re-purposed it to run the Stanford Hunger and Homelessness Auction.
• Items were donated by Stanford students, faculty, and local businesses, and auctioned off with all proceeds donated to the Stanford Opportunity Center.

Hands 4 Hope Youth 2008 - 2009

• Youth-driven outreach organization based in my hometown.