Kayvon Karimi Cybersecurity Engineer | Web Security | Pen Test

About Kayvon

Cybersecurity professional (MS Cybersecurity Engineering, Dec 2025) transitioning from full-stack development to Application Security with 6+ years of secure coding experience. Completed 320-hour intensive pre-apprenticeship gaining hands-on expertise in penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, and OWASP Top 10 controls. Built 100+ production websites with security-first architecture and developed a full-stack security analytics platform. Focused on securing web applications, APIs, and cloud infrastructure while bridging development and security teams.

▶Master's in Cybersecurity Engineering – University of San Diego
▶Graduate of Cybersecurity Pre-Apprenticeship – Cyber Proud
▶Bachelor's in Psychology & Business – Texas A&M University
▶Hands-on cybersecurity experience
📄 View Resume

Skills & Tools

Offensive Security & Network Analysis

Burp Suite OWASP ZAP Nmap Metasploit SQLmap FFUF Gobuster Nikto Wireshark Nessus OpenVAS Hashcat John the Ripper Aircrack-ng Airmon-ng Snort iptables Netcat tcpdump

Security Operations & Monitoring

Splunk Wazuh Elastic Stack Security Onion Autopsy Volatility Pi-hole logs AWS CloudWatch Kibana

Cloud, Infrastructure & Networking

AWS (EC2/S3/IAM) Azure Docker Kubernetes Active Directory Windows Server VirtualBox Pi-hole WireGuard Railway Vercel Terraform Nginx OpenSSL Linux PiVPN

Development & Automation

Python Bash PowerShell FastAPI React Flask Django SQLAlchemy REST APIs JavaScript PHP MySQL PostgreSQL HTML5 CSS3 Vite Axios Apache2 JWT WordPress Git/GitHub

Frameworks, Standards & Compliance

OWASP Top 10 NIST 800-53 MITRE ATT&CK CIS Benchmarks ISO 27001 SOC 2 CVE/CVSS DISA STIGs Zero Trust CIS Controls v8 NIST SP 800-260

Education

Master of Science in Cybersecurity Engineering

University of San Diego

Dec 2025

GPA: 4.00 • Cybersecurity Student Club

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, Minor in Buss.

Texas A&M University

May 2012

GPA: 3.4 • Men's D1 Tennis Team

CompTIA Security+: Expected December 2025

OverTheWire Natas Wargames: July 2025

  • Web application security challenges covering SQL injection, XSS, authentication bypass, and command injection.

Cyber Proud Cybersecurity Pre-Apprenticeship (320 hours): May 2025 Cyber Proud

  • Completed a 16-week intensive training in security fundamentals, cryptography, cloud security, and web security.
  • Developed technical proficiency in Windows/Linux administration, Active Directory, PowerShell, AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes.
  • Gained hands-on experience with penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, SIEM deployment, IDS/IPS, and network security.

TryHackMe: February 2025 - Present

  • Hands-on cybersecurity labs covering network security, penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, and incident response.

Harvard: VPAL Cybersecurity – Managing Risk in the Information Age: August 2023 Harvard

  • Studied governance, threat response, and risk management frameworks.

Google Foundations of Cybersecurity: July 2023 Google

  • Explored key cybersecurity concepts, threats, and risk mitigation strategies.

Project in Development

Current work: GhostTrack Analytics - A privacy-first web analytics platform and IDS (Intrusion Detection System) with built-in security monitoring. Designed custom WordPress plugin for seamless integration.

GhostTrack Dashboard - Real-Time Event Tracking

Live demonstration of the analytics dashboard tracking events from the test page. Shows real-time data visualization, bot detection, and security monitoring. Designed WordPress plugin for one-click integration.

View on GitHub

WordPress Plugin Integration - Production Tracking

Custom WordPress plugin deployed on live WooCommerce site, capturing visitor events via admin dashboard. Demonstrates seamless plugin integration with real-time analytics aggregation.

View on GitHub

Live Dashboard — Multi-Site, Heatmap & IP Lookup

Production deployment with WordPress plugin integration, multi-site management, interactive heatmaps, and IP geolocation tracking across multiple properties in real-time environment.

View on GitHub
GhostTrack WordPress Admin Dashboard

WordPress Admin Panel - Plugin Dashboard Interface

Custom WordPress plugin admin interface integrated into WooCommerce dashboard. One-click installation with comprehensive analytics tracking, site management controls, and real-time event monitoring directly from WordPress.

View on GitHub

Featured Videos

Recent Tutorials: Watch directly below or view on YouTube.

Cyber Security Projects

A few security builds and write-ups. For more projects, click here →

E-Commerce Web Application Security Hardening

  • Multi-layer defense (IDS/IPS/WAF) blocking 5+ active threat sources.
  • Blocked 5M+ malicious IPs with 24/7 monitoring.
Security Report (PDF) GitHub

Design World — Internal Penetration Test Report

  • Identified critical SMBv1 vulnerabilities and weak SSL cipher.
  • Assessed Active Directory exposure and RDP security posture.
Report (PDF) GitHub

Wi-Fi Capture & WPA2 Decryption (Wireshark/Kali)

  • Monitor mode + packet injection; decrypted WPA2 traffic with PSK.
  • Analyzed SSDP/UPnP, HTTP flows; device-scoped filters.
Case Study (PDF) GitHub

VPN Server Setup with AWS, Pi-hole, and PiVPN

  • Configured secure VPN server using AWS EC2, Pi-hole, and PiVPN.
  • Implemented DNS-level ad blocking and encrypted remote access.
Setup Guide (PDF) GitHub

E-commerce Application Vulnerability Assessment

  • Scanned and enumerated endpoints (Nmap, Nikto, Nessus).
  • Mapped vulnerabilities to ASVS and provided recommendations.
Assessment Report GitHub

Bypass Kali Linux Login via GRUB (Forgotten Password)

  • Implemented GRUB bootloader authentication bypass on Kali Linux
  • Conducted remediation to a forgotten Kali password
YouTube GitHub

Forensic Analysis with Autopsy: Recovering System Artifacts

  • Forensic investigation with Autopsy to recover deleted artifacts.
  • Analyzed system logs and registry data for evidence collection.
Report (PDF) GitHub

Design World — Web App Vulnerability Assessment

  • Enumerated routes and tested access control via FFUF, Gobuster.
  • Detected insecure headers and weak TLS configuration.
Assessment Report GitHub

Enterprise Security Hardening & Infrastructure Defense

  • Eliminated critical vulnerabilities in enterprise infrastructure.
  • Achieved zero critical, high, medium, and low findings after hardening.
Report (PDF) GitHub

Media

Images and highlights from cybersecurity builds and projects. Click to enlarge. Click here for full gallery →

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Vulnerabilities Identified
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Security Reports Written
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GitHub Repositories →

Connect with Me

Let's connect and collaborate — I share cybersecurity projects, tutorials, and insights regularly.

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