Seokchan Yoon

Seokchan Yoon

Offensive Security Researcher & Engineer

Security Contributor of GitHub, GitLab, Python, Django, FastAPI(Starlette), Apache Airflow, Ruby, Ruby-on-Rails, Shopify, Java Spring

  • DEF CON 33 CTF Finalist. Active CTF competitor since 2016 (10 years)
  • Awarded Defense Minister Award (2024), National Security Research Institute Director Award (2022, 2021), Cyber Operations Command Award (2019), Education Minister Award (2018)
  • Listed in Google and Naver Bug Bounty Hall of Fame

Work Experience

April 2025 - Present 1 year 1 month

Security Researcher

Zellic.io USA

  • Web2 System Security Auditing
    • Conducted source code-based security audits targeting Web2 infrastructure of global blockchain projects
    • Identified architectural flaws difficult to detect through external testing alone via white-box/gray-box analysis of internal structures
    • Performed pair audits across diverse tech stacks (Node.js, Go, Python, Rust) spanning DeFi, exchanges, and social platforms, discovering numerous high-risk vulnerabilities including authentication bypass, business logic flaws, and DoS
  • Audit Reporting and Global Client Engagement
    • Assessed risk levels and business impact of discovered vulnerabilities and authored English-language audit reports
    • Communicated directly with US-based clients in English, managing the full cycle from audit reporting to patch re-verification
    • Collaborated with the smart contract audit team to comprehensively evaluate compound risks at the Web2/Web3 boundary
    • Promoted from part-time to full-time Researcher in recognition of audit quality and performance
August 2025 - December 2025 5 months

Security Consultant

HEXA LABS

  • Black-box Penetration Testing for Global Enterprise Web Services
    • Performed black-box penetration testing on multiple web services of a global enterprise's overseas subsidiary
July 2025 - February 2026 8 months

Security Team Member (Volunteer)

Airflow Security Team, Apache Software Foundation USA

  • Open-Source Security Team Activities
    • Validated incoming security reports, reproduced vulnerabilities, and assessed impact
    • Reviewed security patches for adequacy and completeness
    • Operated vulnerability disclosure and patch release process per ASF guidelines
  • Discovered 4 Core Airflow Vulnerabilities
    • Found 2 RCE (Remote Code Execution), 1 SSTI (Server-Side Template Injection), and 1 XSS via static analysis
    • All 4 registered as official CVEs; 3 classified as high-severity and released as emergency patches (CVE-2024-39877, CVE-2024-45034, etc.)
March 2025 - February 2026 1 year

Undergraduate Researcher

PWNLAB (Kyung Hee University System Security Lab, Advisor: Daehee Jang)

  • Multi-Cloud Security Verification Tool Development (PM)
    • Led industry-academia project with Samsung Electronics DX Division as PM — drove development planning, regular meetings with Samsung stakeholders and advisor, and task allocation
    • Designed an IaC-based scanner covering ~260 security compliance items (IAM, Network, Container, etc.) across AWS, GCP, and Azure
    • Introduced agentless architecture and multi-threaded parallel engine optimized for large-scale enterprise environments
    • Performed black-box penetration testing on 19 Samsung-owned web services, identifying 10 valid vulnerabilities including IDOR, file upload filter bypass, and XSS with remediation guidance
  • Maintained and developed features for the system hacking wargame pwnable.kr (PHP)
September 2023 - March 2025 1 year 6 months

Unit [REDACTED], Private [REDACTED]

Research Institute under the Ministry of National Defense, Korea

  • Research and development of [REDACTED]
July 2020 - June 2023 3 years

R&D / Proactive Response Team, Security Researcher

STEALIEN

  • Web Penetration Testing / Red Teaming
    • Conducted numerous penetration tests over 3 years targeting web services across major industries including finance, enterprises, and government agencies
    • Performed black-box assessments on diverse environments such as KB Kookmin Bank, Hana Bank, Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Ministry of Foreign Affairs-affiliated services, and Lotte Castle IoT systems
    • Executed a penetration testing engagement for the City of Bandung, Indonesia web services
  • CTF Platform Development and Operation
    • Designed and developed a custom web-based CTF platform (Django + React)
    • Managed the full pipeline of distributing, collecting, and uploading challenges across ~20 problem setters
    • Operated on-site competitions including the Ministry of Education Cybersecurity Competition and Ko-World CTF at Dubai GITEX
  • Internal Security Infrastructure
    • Designed and built internal GitLab, tech blog, deployment systems, and internal network environment to prevent external leakage of exploits

Education

March 2020 - February 2026

Graduated from Computer Science & Engineering

KyungHee University

July 2017 - May 2018

Completed Vulnerability Analysis Track

Best of the Best, Korean Next-Generation Security Leader Training Program

March 2017 - February 2020

Graduated from Dept. of Hacking Defense

Korea Digital Media Highschool

CTF Awards

2025

CCE (Cyber Conflict Exercise)

Finalist

General Division

hosted by National Intelligence Service, Korea

Team: 경희대미남해커들 (KHU's hansome hackers)

2025

DEF CON CTF 33

Finalist

hosted by Nautilus Institute

Team: Cold Fusion

2024

🏆 White Hat Contest

1st

Soldier Division

hosted by Ministry of National Defense, Korea

Team: 키보드워리어플랫폼 (Keyboard Warrior Platform)

Korea Defense Minister Award

2023

CODEGATE

Finalist

University Division

hosted by Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea

Team: 경희대미남해커들 (KHU's hansome hackers)

2022

CODEGATE

Finalist

University Division

hosted by Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea

Team: 경희대미남해커들 (KHU's hansome hackers)

2022

🏆 CCE (Cyber Conflict Exercise)

2nd

Public Institution Sector Division

hosted by National Intelligence Service, Korea

Team: resilience

Korea Security Research Institute Director Award

2022

🏆 HACKTHEON SEJONG National University Cybersecurity Competition

6th

hosted by Sejong Special Self-Governing City, Korea

Team: 라임도둑 (Lime Thief)

Korea Security Research Institute Director Award

2021

🏆 CCE (Cyber Conflict Exercise)

2nd

Public Institution Sector Division

hosted by National Intelligence Service, Korea

Team: resilience

Korea Security Research Institute Director Award

2019

🏆 Cyber Operations Challenge

2nd

Student Division

hosted by Ministry of National Defense, Korea

Team: 윤석찬TV구독과좋아요알림설정까지

Korea Cyber Command Award

2018

🏆 Cybersecurity Competition

1st

Individual Preliminary Round

hosted by Ministry of Education, Korea

SWU President Award

2018

🏆 Cybersecurity Competition

1st

Team Finals

hosted by Ministry of Education, Korea

Team: 문시우1인팀 (munsiwoo 1-person team)

Education Minister Award

2017

🏆 Cybersecurity Competition

1st

Team Finals

hosted by Korea Education and Research Information Service

Team: 4-day exploit

KERIS Director Award

Disclosed Vulnerabilities

CVE 25

CVE-2024-7592: Quadratic complexity parsing cookies with backslashes

There is a LOW severity vulnerability affecting CPython, specifically the http.cookies standard library module. When parsing cookies that contained backslashes for quoted characters in the cookie value, the parser would use an algorithm with quadratic complexity, resulting in excess CPU resources being used while parsing the value.

CVE-2023-36053: Potential regular expression denial of service vulnerability in `EmailValidator`/`URLValidator`

In Django 3.2 before 3.2.20, 4 before 4.1.10, and 4.2 before 4.2.3, EmailValidator and URLValidator are subject to a potential ReDoS (regular expression denial of service) attack via a very large number of domain name labels of emails and URLs.

CVE-2024-24680: Potential denial-of-service in `intcomma` template filter

An issue was discovered in Django 3.2 before 3.2.24, 4.2 before 4.2.10, and Django 5.0 before 5.0.2. The intcomma template filter was subject to a potential denial-of-service attack when used with very long strings.

CVE-2024-27351: Potential regular expression denial-of-service in `django.utils.text.Truncator.words()`

In Django 3.2 before 3.2.25, 4.2 before 4.2.11, and 5.0 before 5.0.3, the django.utils.text.Truncator.words() method (with html=True) and the truncatewords_html template filter are subject to a potential regular expression denial-of-service attack via a crafted string. NOTE: this issue exists because of an incomplete fix for CVE-2019-14232 and CVE-2023-43665.

CVE-2024-21520: Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) in browserable API of django-rest-framework

Versions of the package djangorestframework before 3.15.2 are vulnerable to Cross-site Scripting (XSS) via the break_long_headers template filter due to improper input sanitization before splitting and joining with <br> tags.

CVE-2024-41991: Potential denial-of-service vulnerability in `django.utils.html.urlize()` and `AdminURLFieldWidget`

An issue was discovered in Django 5.0 before 5.0.8 and 4.2 before 4.2.15. The urlize and urlizetrunc template filters, and the AdminURLFieldWidget widget, are subject to a potential denial-of-service attack via certain inputs with a very large number of Unicode characters.

CVE-2024-53908: Potential SQL injection in `HasKey(lhs, rhs)` on Oracle

An issue was discovered in Django 5.1 before 5.1.4, 5.0 before 5.0.10, and 4.2 before 4.2.17. Direct usage of the django.db.models.fields.json.HasKey lookup, when an Oracle database is used, is subject to SQL injection if untrusted data is used as an lhs value. (Applications that use the jsonfield.has_key lookup via __ are unaffected.)

CVE-2025-48432: Potential log injection via unescaped request path

An issue was discovered in Django 5.2 before 5.2.3, 5.1 before 5.1.11, and 4.2 before 4.2.23. Internal HTTP response logging does not escape request.path, which allows remote attackers to potentially manipulate log output via crafted URLs. This may lead to log injection or forgery when logs are viewed in terminals or processed by external systems.

CVE-2025-64458: Potential denial-of-service vulnerability in `HttpResponseRedirect` and `HttpResponsePermanentRedirect` on Windows

NFKC normalization in Python is slow on Windows. As a consequence, django.http.HttpResponseRedirect, django.http.HttpResponsePermanentRedirect, and the shortcut django.shortcuts.redirect were subject to a potential denial-of-service attack via certain inputs with a very large number of Unicode characters.

CVE-2025-64460: Potential denial-of-service vulnerability in XML serializer text extraction

Algorithmic complexity in django.core.serializers.xml_serializer.getInnerText() allows a remote attacker to cause a potential denial-of-service attack triggering CPU and memory exhaustion via specially crafted XML input processed by the XML Deserializer.

CVE-2026-1285: Potential denial-of-service vulnerability in `django.utils.text.Truncator` HTML methods

django.utils.text.Truncator.chars() and Truncator.words() methods (with html=True) and the truncatechars_html and truncatewords_html template filters allow a remote attacker to cause a potential denial-of-service via crafted inputs containing a large number of unmatched HTML end tags.

CVE-2026-33033: Potential denial-of-service vulnerability in `MultiPartParser` via base64-encoded file upload

When using django.http.multipartparser.MultiPartParser, multipart uploads with Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 that include excessive whitespace may trigger repeated memory copying, potentially degrading performance.

CVE-2026-25673: Potential denial-of-service vulnerability in `URLField` via Unicode normalization on Windows

On Windows, urllib.parse.urlsplit() performs NFKC normalization (unicodedata.normalize), which can be disproportionately slow for large inputs containing certain characters. django.forms.URLField.to_python() used urlsplit() for scheme detection, making it vulnerable to denial-of-service via specially crafted POST payloads.

CVE-2025-62727: Starlette vulnerable to O(n^2) DoS via `Range` header merging

An unauthenticated attacker can send a crafted HTTP Range header that triggers quadratic-time processing in Starlette's FileResponse Range parsing/merging logic. This enables CPU exhaustion per request, causing denial-of-service for endpoints serving files (e.g., StaticFiles or any use of FileResponse).

CVE-2024-39877: Apache Airflow: DAG Author Code Execution possibility in airflow-scheduler

Apache Airflow 2.4.0, and versions before 2.9.3, has a vulnerability that allows authenticated DAG authors to craft a doc_md parameter in a way that could execute arbitrary code in the scheduler context, which should be forbidden according to the Airflow Security model.

CVE-2024-39863: Apache Airflow: Potential XSS Vulnerability

Apache Airflow versions before 2.9.3 have a vulnerability that allows an authenticated attacker to inject a malicious link when installing a provider.

CVE-2024-45034: Apache Airflow: Authenticated DAG authors could execute code on scheduler nodes

Apache Airflow versions before 2.10.1 have a vulnerability that allows DAG authors to add local settings to the DAG folder and get it executed by the scheduler, where the scheduler is not supposed to execute code submitted by the DAG author.

CVE-2024-56373: Apache Airflow: Code Injection via Log Template History

Apache Airflow before 2.11.1 has a vulnerability that allows a DAG author to manipulate the database to execute arbitrary code in the web-server context via the log template history feature, leading to potential remote code execution when a user views historical task information.

CVE-2024-41123: DoS vulnerabilities in REXML

The REXML gem before 3.3.2 has some DoS vulnerabilities when it parses an XML that has many specific characters such as whitespace character, >] and ]>.

CVE-2024-47887: Possible ReDoS vulnerability in HTTP Token authentication in Action Controller

There is a possible ReDoS vulnerability in Action Controller's HTTP Token authentication. For applications using HTTP Token authentication via authenticate_or_request_with_http_token or similar, a carefully crafted header may cause header parsing to take an unexpected amount of time, possibly resulting in a DoS vulnerability.

CVE-2024-41128: Possible ReDoS vulnerability in query parameter filtering in Action Dispatch

There is a possible ReDoS vulnerability in the query parameter filtering routines of Action Dispatch. Carefully crafted query parameters can cause query parameter filtering to take an unexpected amount of time, possibly resulting in a DoS vulnerability.

CVE-2026-33169: Possible ReDoS vulnerability in `number_to_delimited` in Active Support

The NumberToDelimitedConverter in Rails Active Support uses a regular expression with gsub! to insert thousands delimiters into numeric strings. When processing very long digit sequences, the regex exhibits quadratic time complexity, allowing an attacker to trigger a denial-of-service condition (ReDoS) by passing crafted input to number_to_delimited.

CVE-2026-33170: Possible XSS vulnerability in `SafeBuffer#%` in Active Support

ActiveSupport::SafeBuffer#% fails to propagate the @html_safe flag correctly. When a SafeBuffer is mutated in place and then formatted with % using untrusted arguments, the resulting string incorrectly reports html_safe? == true, bypassing ERB auto-escaping and potentially leading to XSS.

CVE-2026-4821: Proxy configuration command injection in GitHub Enterprise Server Management Console

An OS command injection vulnerability in GitHub Enterprise Server's Management Console configuration API allowed an authenticated MC administrator to execute arbitrary OS commands via shell metacharacter injection in proxy configuration fields such as http_proxy. The injected value flowed into /etc/environment and was executed when GHES utilities sourced it as part of routine support operations.

CVE-2024-38809: Spring Framework DoS via conditional HTTP request

Applications that parse ETags from If-Match or If-None-Match request headers are vulnerable to DoS attack.

Bug Bounty & Others 11

HackerOne #3590929: Missing authorization on [REDACTED] exposes secrets to unauthenticated users

GitLab is vulnerable to a missing authorization check on [REDACTED], allowing an unauthenticated attacker to access sensitive information from [REDACTED].

HackerOne #3550632: SSRF via [REDACTED] on gitlab.com allows [REDACTED] exfiltration

GitLab is vulnerable to a server-side request forgery via [REDACTED], allowing an attacker to exfiltrate [REDACTED].

HackerOne #3551313: Open Redirect in [REDACTED] via [REDACTED] parameter

Shopify is vulnerable to an open redirect in [REDACTED] due to an unvalidated [REDACTED] parameter, allowing an attacker to redirect users to [REDACTED].

HackerOne #2646500: DoS Vulnerability in GitHub Enterprise

GitHub and GitHub Enterprise are vulnerable to a potential denial-of-service attack caused by a maliciously crafted HTTP request.

NBB-1126: Stored XSS

NAVER is vulnerable to a stored-xss caused by a crafted payload.

NBB-1143: SQL Injection

NAVER is vulnerable to a SQL injection caused by a crafted payload.

NBB-1260: Stored XSS

NAVER is vulnerable to a stored XSS caused by a crafted payload.

NBB-2026-0028: Reflected XSS on NAVER OO Service

NAVER is vulnerable to a reflected XSS caused by a crafted payload.

NBB-2026-0029: Reflected XSS on NAVER OO Service

NAVER is vulnerable to a reflected XSS caused by a crafted payload.

NBB-2026-0043: XSS on NAVER OO Service

NAVER is vulnerable to a DOM-based XSS chained with CORS misconfiguration, allowing an attacker to exfiltrate personal information.

NBB-2026-0044: XSS on NAVER OO Service

NAVER is vulnerable to a DOM-based XSS chained with CORS misconfiguration, allowing an attacker to exfiltrate personal information.

Talks

“Methodology for Open-Source Vulnerability Detection and Analysis Using LLMs” (in Korean)

.HACK Conference (Theori 주최)

2026

“How a $5 Prompt Found a $2,613 Vulnerability” (in Korean)

PyAI Symposium 2025 (hosted by Python Korea)

2025

“Django Framework from a Hacker's Perspective” (in Korean)

PyCon KR 2024

2024

“Analysis of Django Framework N-day Vulnerabilities and Secure Coding Guide” (in Korean)

CODEGATE 2023

2023

“Django Framework 1-day Analysis” (in Korean)

26th Hacking Camp

2023

“Bug Cases and Secure Coding in Modern Web Services” (in Korean)

STEALIEN Security Seminar

2022

Blog Posts