▲About
maria.khan
I started this site because the useful part of a production investigation usually disappeared after the fix shipped. These pages keep the dead ends, the source links, and the detail that made the final answer make sense.
Open source I've shipped
leakferret started after I had rotated enough credentials that should never have reached git history. I built the project from the scanner core through its editor and agent integrations. The source and release packages are public.
leakferret
Context-aware secret scanner
I built the Rust engine, fixture catalog, provider checks, editor integration, MCP server, and release pipeline. It finds likely credentials, separates documented fixtures from real findings, verifies supported providers, and can rewrite a hardcoded value to an environment lookup.
Contribution activity
1,100+ contributions in the last year
Verified total across public and private work. GitHub's account heatmap can show a lower number.
What usually happens in an investigation
An alert rarely points at the broken boundary. A Redis timeout once came down to a client rebuilt without its connection options. A rollout error turned into a connection-lifetime problem. I keep following the path until the observed behavior and the code agree.
Coding agents help me search, compare implementations, and test a hypothesis faster. I still read the diff, trace the runtime path, and verify the result. A confident answer does not count as evidence.
Featured writing
-
Redis keys need owners
A shared Redis instance had accumulated locks, claims, counters, and flags with no common ownership or expiry rules. A small registry turned those anonymous keys into named coordination primitives with explicit failure behavior.
-
Delayed delivery without unbounded queues
A fixed binary ladder turns arbitrary delivery delays into bounded RabbitMQ topology with message TTLs, dead-letter routing, and powers of two, without plugins.
-
Catching the secret before the commit, not after the audit
Rotating a credential after it entered git history kept costing hours. I built leakferret to catch the value earlier, separate fixtures from real findings, verify supported providers, and help remove the secret.
Achievements
- 2024 Grace Hopper Celebration India Scholarship Award (AnitaB.org)
- 2023 Amazon ML Summer School recipient
- 2023 CodeElevate scholarship recipient
- 2022 Mercor AI Chatbot Hiring Challenge 2.0, 4th globally
- 2022 to 2024 TalentSprint × Google Women Engineers Program (2-year cohort)
Education & certifications
- 2021 to 2025 Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science & Engineering. CGPA 8.5/10 (3.7 GPA on the 4.0 scale)
- cert INE Certified Cloud Associate (INE)
- cert Cyber Security Bootcamp for Women (ICTTF Cyber Risk Academy)
- cert Certified Kubernetes Administrator preparation (in progress) (CNCF / Linux Foundation)
Open to
$ ./hire.sh > open_to: backend, infrastructure, developer tools > shape: full-time or contract > location: remote / hybrid (India) > contact: [email protected] > exit 0
- →Backend and infrastructure work with real ownership of design, rollout, and operations.
- →Developer tools and reliability products built for engineers who need to understand what the system actually did.
- →Full-time or contract roles, remote or hybrid in India.
Ask me about
Pick a subject below and the email opens with it filled in. A concrete question makes the conversation easier for both of us.