Melanie Rieback

Melanie R. Rieback (26 October 1978) is a computer scientist, chiefly known for her work regarding the privacy and security of RFID (radio frequency identification) technology.

Melanie Rieback was born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 26, 1978. Although she was born in Ohio, she was raised in Florida. Her parents are David John Rieback and Eileen Sharon Rieback who worked at Bell Labs.

She obtained her Bachelor of Science in both Computer Science and Biology from the University of Miami in 2000. She received her Master‘s in Computer Science from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands in 2003. In 2008, she completed her PhD in Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

RFID Guardian

In an interview, Rieback stated the importance of the RFID Security, she stated "If you are using RFID on cows, who cares? takes one breach at the wrong time and it could wreck it for the RFID industry.

The RFID Guardian was developed as part of the when Rieback was a Graduate student at the Vrije Universiteit. She was supervised by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. She created the first RFID virus to show the loopholes in the RFID security. The technology "jams" the signal so that the tags cannot be read from a certain distance. However, this technology still have the limitations because the technology can only block the responses but not kill the queries of the tags. However, they have no intentions of mass producing the technology.

Although there was concern about publishing the different ways that RFID tags could be exploited online, it causes the threats to this technology to no longer be theoretical. Also, it allows these concerns to be approached rather than proceeding with the idea that these threats do not exist.

Girls Geek Dinner NL

The Girls Geek Dinner NL was founded at the Dutch chapter of the Girls Geek Dinner. It is meant as a way to promote the idea of women to pursue fields that are typically male-dominated. Each dinner consists of talks from women who are exceptional in their field followed by a Q&A Session. Additionally, men are allowed to attend if they are invited by a female.

Radically Open Security

Radically Open Security was co-founded by Melanie Rieback and CEO of Radically Open Security. It is a non-profit organization that helps make the cyber world more secure. They only do "non-fishy" jobs and provide step-by-step procedures in order for companies to do the same work without the company interfering. Furthermore, they provide the tools and source code on their website to help others perform that same tasks that they do even if "it costs [them] repeat business". Radically Open Security provides services regarding code audits, cryptographic analysis, forensics, malware reversing, and more. Radically Open Security is also part of ACE Venture Lab

Other Work

At the MIT Center for Genome Research/ Whitehead Institute, she worked on the Human Genome Project and co-authored the paper "Initial Sequencing and Analysis of the Human Genome".

In 2010, Rieback was a finalist for the ICT Professional of the Year Award and named one of the most successful women in the Netherlands by Viva Magazine

Rieback was named as one of the top fifty Dutch inspirational women in 2016 in the list "Inspiring Fifty: Netherlands 2016".