About me

Hi,

My name is Peter Van Eeckhoutte. You may know me as corelanc0d3r or as the "Corelan" guy.

I was born in 1975 and spent my childhood in a small town called Vichte, Belgium.
14 years later, I got my first computer and about 5 years later I started working in a computer shop where I was responsible for the technical department, servers/network installations, etc…     I finished my Bachelor degree in IT at the same time.
In 2000, right after the Y2K hype, I was hired by a big company to serve as Systems Administrator. 
My main responsibility was taking care of the servers and network, and shortly after I became part of the Center of Excellence for Security and Messaging for our European sister companies.
About one year later, I became a member of the Core Active Directory Team and Security Competence Center for the entire corporation (worldwide) and was appointed “IT Security Officer”.
In 2006/2007, our European group of companies has been acquired by another big company and we have merged with another large company early 2009.  All of this has given me the opportunity to work with some great people all over the world, manage complex projects and keep my never-ending drive to gather knowledge alive.

I started this website in 2007. Initially, I was mainly posting some networking/sysadmin stuff, but as I was researching and documenting memory corruptions and exploit development for Windows, I decided to publish my notes. Those became the infamous Corelan Exploit Writing Tutorials.

Until mid June 2009, I have been serving as IT Infrastructure Manager (and IT Security Officer) at the very same company, managing an excellent team of Helpdesk/PC Support/Network Engineering/Systems Engineering folks, trying to do as much “hands-on” operations as possible.
On June 15th 2009, I was appointed IT Infrastructure Manager Northern Europe, adding our sister companies in the Netherlands and Germany to my responsibilities.

In September 2009, I founded the Corelan Security Team, gathering a group of security enthusiasts, who all share the same common interests : research, learn and share. 
Since that date, the team has been working with tons of vendors, reporting numerous bugs, requesting vendors to fix, and performing coordinated disclosure, with the aim to make this digital world a little bit safer.

In January 2012, I became the CISO | Corporate IST Security Officer at the company I have been working for since 2000.
In September 2014, I became the Director of IST Infastructure Services and Security at the same company.
Unfortunately, workload and life starting to get in the way of supporting activities for "Corelan Team" and the team kind of dissolved.   I decided to keep the website alive and it's content free.

In October 2018 I left my corporate job.   In February 2019, with the creation of “Corelan Consulting bvba”, I became 100% self-employed, and started making a living through  Corelan Training activities.

I currently live in Harelbeke with my girlfriend and my daughther Mona

Corelan Team

Corelan Team was a group of IT Security researchers/enthusiasts/professionals/hobbyists who shared the same interests, mainly focused on 3 things :

Research :
The team enjoyed working together to perform all kinds of security research, ranging from finding vulnerabilities and working with vendors/developers to get them fixed, over developing and documenting  exploitation techniques to writing tools & exploits to support community security frameworks such as Metasploit.

Education :
The team insisted on sharing findings and knowledge with others.  One of the results of our team work are the Corelan Exploit Development tutorials which have been published on this website over the last few years.   
In addition to this, we operated a forum and the #corelan channel on Freenode IRC.    Those resources don't exist anymore, but Corelan operates a free Discord Server now.
 Feel free to drop by and don’t be shy to ask questions.  If we can answer and help, we certainly wil.

Fun :
Yes, of course just enjoyed ourselves and having fun was a main driver.  Doing all of the above is a lot of fun already, but we also enjoyed joining forces and play wargames, public CTFs, etc.


We were not some kind of shady underground ‘gang’

The team mainly consistsed of people who were (most of them still are) involved with cybersecurity in their professional lives.  

While part of Corelan Team, some of our former and current members got jobs at well known and well respected IT security related companies such as Rapid7, Tenable, ESET, Stratsec, Immunity Inc., iDefense, Boeing, Campofrio Food Group, Apollo Group.  Some of them are now well-respected vulnerability researchers and professional bug hunters.
While those jobs are not related or affiliated with Corelan in any way (nor was landing the job the result of being a member of Corelan Team), we are very proud on what our members have achieved individually. 
To a certain extent, it adds to the high standards, ethics, quality and reputation of our team. 

Ethics
Corelan Team is a firm believer in responsible disclosure as a non-profit team, and consists of security professionals and enthusiasts around the world with high-standard ethics.  We condemn illegal activities related to computer hacking, and we will take appropriate actions if anyone in our territory is involved, or intends to be in such unlawful matters (ie. on Discord).
Our tools, live trainings, and tutorials are created for the sole purpose of security awareness and education.  We certainly do not encourage our readers/users/students/members to do harms with the knowledge they receive. 

Former Corelan Team Members