What I'm Building Now
Current work at the intersection of cryptography, heritage, and community safety.
macOS Security Research: A Complete Framework
New (April 2026): a complete six-phase methodology distilled from 35 years of practice — Scope, Recon, Research Tracks, Red-Team, Submission, Archive. Eleven chapters covering vendor disclosure, the Darwin/XNU landscape, and the discipline of proof. Free under CC BY-SA 4.0 — HTML, EPUB and PDF.
Read & download (free) →Whitby Jet Provenance Platform
Cryptographic verification for genuine Whitby Jet jewellery. Each piece carries an NFC tag with an unforgeable AES-128 signature. Customers tap with any phone — no app required.
authenticwhitbyjet.co.uk →Maritime Cyber Security — Whitby
Plain-English cyber security advice for Whitby's maritime community. GPS spoofing risks, marine insurance cyber gaps, onboard network security, and UK GDPR compliance for small operators.
maritime-security.html →Data Protection — Pro Bono
Background and experience in data protection: DPIAs, LIAs, clinical trial systems, law firms, retail, and family support. Not a services page — a record of what I know. Pro bono community help only.
data-protection.html →NTAG 424 DNA SDK for macOS
The first native macOS SDK for NXP NTAG 424 DNA NFC authentication. Full EV2First protocol, Secure Dynamic Messaging, key management. 2,145 lines of Swift + C. Zero dependencies.
github.com/jetnoir/ntag424-macos →Scratchpad
A hyperlocal clipboard for macOS. Press CMD+SHIFT+X and move text between screens instantly. No cloud, no accounts, no tracking. 462 lines of Swift.
github.com/jetnoir/scratchpad →What I've Delivered
Over forty years across defence, healthcare, finance, and government.
TfL Contactless Travel Security
Designed the cryptographic key management architecture for London's contactless payment network. ISO 27001 and PCI DSS compliant. 22,000 readers, 8 million daily transactions.
NHS National Cryptographic Standards
Authored cryptographic security standards for the NHS national programme. Smart card infrastructure analysis, key derivation protocols, protecting 60 million patient records.
Cyber Security & Data Protection
GDPR implementation, security architecture, penetration testing, and incident response across financial services, retail, and critical national infrastructure.
Four Generations of Whitby Craft
The threads that connect Victorian jet workshops to AES-128.
Robert Dixon — Victorian Whitby Jet Worker
My four-times great-grandfather Robert Dixon worked Whitby Jet in the Victorian era, in the heart of the jet trade. The 1911 Census records him as a jet worker in a town where the material defined the economy and identity of its people.
When I moved to Whitby, I didn't plan to build a provenance platform. But standing on the same streets where my ancestor shaped jet by hand, the idea felt inevitable: use what I know — cryptography — to protect what he helped create.
William (Bill) Steele — Signals, Convoys, Cold War Scarborough
My grandfather William (Bill) Steele served as a radio officer in the Merchant Navy during the Second World War, trained by the Marconi Company in Aberdeen. On convoy duty across hostile waters, he was responsible for receiving and relaying messages about submarine attacks — signals that kept ships and their crews alive. It was skilled, dangerous work conducted under fire and in extreme conditions.
After the war he was recruited into what was then called the Government Spy School — a signals intelligence agency — and ended up in Scarborough, where he spent the Cold War listening in on Russian Navy Morse code transmissions, helping to protect British interests at the height of the Cold War. There is still a government listening station in Scarborough to this day.
I didn't grow up thinking of encryption as a family trade. But somewhere between Bill's wartime radio set and the AES-128 keys I work with now, the thread is there.
Principles
Provenance
Know where things come from
Heritage
Protect what came before
Honesty
Say what it is and isn't
Craft
Build things properly
Accessibility
Make it work for everyone
Independence
No investors, no extraction
Qualifications
Professional certifications.
Privacy & Data Protection
Security
Sometimes Serious. Sometimes Not.
All the hats. The cryptography is real; the pirate isn't.
Some decorative images on this site are AI-generated and labelled as such.
A Note on Working With Me
Being honest upfront saves everyone time.
I’m neurodivergent — ADHD, autism, RSD. Over 35 years I’ve had more than 75 jobs. I’m not a conventional worker. I do my best work on things that genuinely interest me, on my own terms, at my own pace.
Not available for commercial work. This site is a record of what I’ve done, what I know, and what interests me — not a shop window. I share knowledge pro bono when health and energy allow, for community, charity, or research purposes.
Written communication only. No phone calls, no video meetings, no real-time chat. Async, at my pace. I may not respond quickly. I may not respond at all. That isn’t rudeness — it’s capacity.
Get in Touch
Based in Whitby. Not available for commercial work. Happy to share knowledge pro bono when health and time allow, written enquiries only.
stuartpaulthomas@gmail.com