About

Table of Contents

Whoami

Hello! I’m Francesco Bianchi, a passionate software engineer and cybersecurity enthusiast currently pursuing my Master’s Degree in Computer Science at Sapienza University of Rome. I’ve worked on some exciting projects and competitions, ranging from software engineering internships to competing in international cybersecurity and programming contests.

I actively participate in CTFs with TheRomanXpl0it and Mhackeroni, where I specialize in cryptography challenges. On this blog, you can also find writeups of past CTFs that I’ve competed in.

Education

  • Master’s Degree in Engineering in Computer Science, Sapienza University of Rome (Expected July 2025)
    • Courses: Cryptography, Algorithms for Distributed Systems, Cybersecurity, and more.
  • Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome (2020–2023)
    • Graduated with honors (110/110 Magna cum laude), ranked in the top 1% of my cohort.

Work Experience

  • Security & Software Engineer - Bending Spoons (soon🚀, july 2025)
  • Course Coordinator, CyberChallenge.IT ‑ Sapienza University of Rome (2023–2025)
    • Responsible for organizing and teaching at the CyberChallenge.IT program at Sapienza, a nationwide cybersecurity competition. This role includes overseeing three months of practical training sessions, ending in a competition at both local and national levels.
  • Founder and Coordinator of CyberBootcamp ‑ Sapienza University of Rome (2023–2025)
    • Created and coordinated CyberBootcamp from scratch, a one‑month cybersecurity course with over 200 participants, featuring practical lessons and a CTF competition that I also developed and organized.
  • Software Engineer Intern, Finccam (July–Sept 2023)
    • Led initiatives that optimized the memory usage of an R application by over 500 times and improved testing speed by 35%.
  • Software Engineer Intern, CNIT (2022–2023)
    • Conducted statistical analysis for 3GPP standardization evolution and developed a web app for data analysis.

Achievements

  • CSAW 2024: 1th Place at Embedded Security Challenge with TRX, Grenoble (France).
  • DEFCON 2024: 6th Place at DEFCON Finals with the Mhackeroni team, Las Vegas.
  • Open ECSC: 5th place in Round 3 (globally, individual competition)
  • Cryptohack: Currently 2nd in the Italian scoreboard
  • SWERC 2024 & 2023: Honorable mention in the ICPC South-Western European Regional Contest
  • CyberChallenge.IT 2023: Winner of both Local and National Competitions.
  • Windsurfer Junior National Champion: September 2021 (I used to windsurf a lot, now I play CTF a lot)