Fábio Maia

Computer Engineer, Security Researcher, Indiehacker

Operating Systems: OS Kernels (Linux, LK, seL4), Android (Init, Zygote, SELinux), Debian (systemd, GNU, POSIX), Docker
Reverse Engineering: Android (Java, JNI), Linux C/C++, ARM, ImHex, Ghidra, JADX, Frida
Firmware: bootloaders, device trees (DTB/DTS), TrustZone
Hardware Design: VHDL, RTL, Xilinx Vitis, USB C
Hardware Security: Secure Boot, TrustZone, OP-TEE, Intel SGX
Networking: TCP, TLS, HTTP, X.509, PKI (OpenSSL, Golang, Python)

Experience

Oct 2025 – present Freelance

Reverse engineering consulting.
Micro SaaS: BrainSpeed.ai, Explorar.dev, Surrealista.pt

Jul 2022 – Jul 2025 Lead Reverse Engineer @ Bliq

Lead team of 3 embedded engineers and security researchers working on Android systems
Reverse engineering applications in Android userland (C/C++, Init, Bionic, Zygote, SELinux), OEM Android kernels, LK-based bootloaders, TrustZone firmware
Linux kernel (Kbuild, kernel modules, Syscalls, Init), AOSP (Soong, repo manifests), device tree (DTB/DTS)
R&D USB C flashing protocols, introductory HW hacking & IC reverse engineering

Feb 2020 – Jul 2022 Reverse Engineer @ Bliq

Reverse engineering Android applications, Google Play Services, and private HTTP API
GNU/Linux server sysadmin (systemd, iptables, coreutils, POSIX shell)
TLS (OpenSSL/Python, Golang), PKI, X.509
Computer vision (FFMPEG, PyTorch, OpenCV, Flutter)

2017-2018 Undergrad Researcher @ University of Aveiro

Published How to Choose the Best Tool for Each Task (Code Quality, Biomedical NLP).
Developed LEMA (Three.js, WebGL) for mathematics early childhood education.
Forked university LaTeX dissertation template into a new official location on GitHub

2007-2015 Open Source Web Developer @ MyBB

Self-taught web development and Linux system administration from age 12
Built plugins and themes for MyBB forum software (PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS)
Open source community support, documentation, and tutorials

Education

2017-2019 MSc Computer Engineering @ University of Aveiro

CPU/GPU microarchitecture, CUDA programming, SoC Codesign (VHDL, C/C++)
Cybersecurity (X.509 PKI, TLS, AES, SHA, RSA)
Deep Learning (MATLAB, TensorFlow), Transfer Learning (VGG16, Inception, ResNet)

2014-2017 BSc Computer Engineering @ University of Aveiro

Digital hardware design in VHDL, FPGA, Altera, Xilinx
Embedded systems, PIC32 microcontroller programming, Cisco ISP networking
OS design, Linux userspace programming, Linux filesystems
MIPS CPU architecture, MIPS assembly, C/C++, Java