# Dylan Ayrey

> Dylan Ayrey is the co-founder and CEO of Truffle Security and the original author of TruffleHog, the open-source secret scanner he began in 2016 while looking for bug-bounty targets. A Rochester Institute of Technology graduate and former Netflix security practitioner, he has turned research about leaked credentials, cloud permissions, OAuth, weak keys, and developer behavior into public tools, conference talks, and a venture-backed security company that raised a $25 million Series B in November 2025.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Truffle Security
- **Organizations:** Truffle Security, TruffleHog, Netflix, Salesforce, Rochester Institute of Technology
- **Education:** BS in Computer Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology
- **Known for:** Created TruffleHog, an open-source secret scanner that had surpassed 23,000 GitHub stars, 15 million downloads, and 250,000 daily runs by November 2025., Co-founded Truffle Security and led the company through a $25 million Series B in November 2025., Presented security research at Black Hat, DEF CON, BSidesSF, ToorCon, and other conferences.

## Career timeline

- **2015** — Graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a BS in Computer Engineering.
- **2016** — Wrote and open-sourced the first version of TruffleHog while using it to search Git history for bug-bounty targets.
- **2020** — Presented cloud-security research on GCP lateral movement and privilege escalation at Black Hat and DEF CON.
- **2021** — Left Netflix and co-founded Truffle Security with Dustin Decker and Julian Dunning; a16z announced its Series A investment in December.
- **2022** — Released TruffleHog v3 with expanded detectors and live-secret verification, and co-presented research on bug-hunter data handling at Black Hat USA.
- **2024** — Published research on 11,554 GitHub accounts using 1024-bit SSH keys and on guessable symmetric JWT signing keys.
- **2025** — Truffle Security raised a $25 million Series B led by Intel Capital and a16z and launched GCP Analyze.

## Achievements

- Created TruffleHog, an open-source secret scanner that had surpassed 23,000 GitHub stars, 15 million downloads, and 250,000 daily runs by November 2025.
- Co-founded Truffle Security and led the company through a $25 million Series B in November 2025.
- Presented security research at Black Hat, DEF CON, BSidesSF, ToorCon, and other conferences.
- Co-discovered and disclosed cloud-security, OAuth, certificate, key-generation, and application-security weaknesses.
- Named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 class of 2022 in Enterprise Technology.

## Latest updates

- **2025-11** — Truffle Security announced a $25 million Series B led by Intel Capital and a16z and launched GCP Analyze.
- **2025-10** — Co-authored a Truffle Security essay with Zach Rice and Brad Larsen on the evolution of secret scanning into non-human identity security.
- **2025-04** — Presented 'Let's Talk About the AI Apocalypse' at BSidesSF 2025.

## Links

- Website: https://security.love/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylanayrey
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/InsecureNature
- GitHub: https://github.com/dxa4481
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TruffleSecurity
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@trufflesecurity

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/dylan-ayrey
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-26