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hikaro_
// /about

whoami

I’m hikaro — a reverse engineer working primarily in C, C++ and x86/x64 assembly. I take apart binaries for a living and for sport: malware, kernel drivers, anti-cheat, firmware, obfuscated commercial software, occasionally my own bugs.

My instinct is to follow control flow down to the instruction that actually matters and then write down what I learned in a form a stranger can pick up cold. That’s most of what this site is — public artifacts from that process.

Outside of binaries, I read a lot of papers on exploit mitigation, fuzzing, and program analysis, and play CTFs with friends. Reverse engineering taught me to trust nothing and verify everything; that habit bleeds into the rest of my work.

H_
handle / hikaro
location / classified
// $ ls ~/skills
hikaro@target — bash
hikaro@target:~/skills$ cat languages
C · C++ · x86 / x64 ASM · Python · Rust (learning)
hikaro@target:~/skills$ cat re-tools
IDA Pro · Ghidra · Radare2 · Binary Ninja · x64dbg · GDB + pwndbg
hikaro@target:~/skills$ cat exploit-dev
pwntools · ROPgadget · AFL++ · libFuzzer
hikaro@target:~/skills$ cat adjacent
kernel internals · embedded firmware · anti-cheat / anti-debug
// focus
  • active
    Kernel anti-cheat internals

    Static + dynamic analysis of commercial protection layers. Focus on syscall hooks, integrity routines, and the boundary between user and kernel checks.

  • active
    Firmware bootloader analysis

    Extracting and rehosting embedded bootloaders, mapping memory layouts, and reasoning about secure-boot chains in real hardware.

  • ongoing
    Exploit dev fundamentals

    Modern mitigations are interesting precisely because they shape the technique. I document each primitive end-to-end so the reasoning carries over to the next target.

  • ongoing
    CTF + research writing

    Long-form writeups are the artifact — they exist to make the next engineer faster, not to perform.

  • // certs
    OSCP (in progress)
    OSEP (planned)
    CRTO (planned)
    // pgp
    fingerprint
    0xDEAD BEEF CAFE BABE 1337 4242 ABCD 0000 0000 FFFF
    pgp.asc