Hey! I’m Maxim Pugachev. I’ve been a software engineer for 20+ years, wearing most of the hats along the way — engineer, team lead, tech lead, head of engineering, CTO — but the part I actually enjoy is the layer underneath the application: runtimes, HTTP stacks, the kernel, and what programs really do once they’re compiled.
A while back, that curiosity pulled me into reverse engineering, and I got hooked. So now I spend my spare time pulling binaries apart and solving challenges, slowly turning a hobby into the thing I actually want to do.
What I’m into
My comfort zone is Linux and ELF — low-level systems, performance, the internals most people scroll past. That’s where my 20 years actually point, and honestly it’s where I think the fun RE work is going too: Linux and cloud stuff, edge devices, and the kind of malware that lives there instead of on someone’s laptop.
I’m less interested in cracking one binary and more in the idea of building things that crack a whole category of them. My background is systems and tooling, so that’s the lens I bring — treating RE as something you can program against, not just grind by hand. I’m not there yet, but that’s the direction.
Stuff I’m working toward
Think of this as my to-do list more than my CV:
- Getting properly deep on Linux/ELF reversing and program analysis
- Learning the automation side — IDAPython, symbolic execution, and generally making the tools do the boring parts
- Building and publishing my own open-source RE tooling
- Writing up real analysis, not just crackme solutions — the harder targets
- Working my way toward adversarial Linux/cloud runtime security: detection, tooling, and the research behind it
Where my stuff lives
- Writeups and projects right here on the blog
- GitHub: github.com/itwaseasy — including a few of my own tools
- Where I practice: HackTheBox · pwn.college · picoCTF
Say hi
Always up for talking Linux internals, reverse engineering, or any gnarly low-level problem.