About Roppers Academy

Our Story So Far

In 2016 I was the training officer for my school's competitive cyber security team. I had the responsibility of creating training materials and teaching ~100 students the absolute fundamentals to get them up to speed so they could participate in CTFs with everybody else. I spent two years trying to figure out the perfect curriculum and eventually realized I need a scalable platform to provide direction and track the progress of that many students.

Four years of curriculum development later, Roppers Academy was born. My goal is for this site to become the best place on the internet for a beginner to take their first steps into the field. I already think that it is, but my goal is for this to become the place that everyone is confident recommending as their go-to. It's been two years since the site launched and we are well on our way to achieving that first goal.

Roppers is derived from a word I made up to describe people who write Return Oriented Programming (ROP) exploits. Most importantly, it rhymes with the name of Admiral Grace Hopper for when we call ourselves "Hopper's Roppers".

We are here to provide guidance to new students on their first steps of their journey into cyberspace and then send them off on their own, with a solid foundation and headed in the right direction. I hope to have given them the tools, techniques, community, and the hacker mentality required to address any problem that comes their way.

About the Author

Hello, I'm Dennis Devey!

I am an independent security researcher who is into education, malware command and control, and endpoint hardening. Back in school I was on our competitive Cyber Security Team and focused on building training for new members. I made this website to continue the work I had done and to share it with the widest audience possble.