Mirza AliSecurity engineer · founder

Hi, I’m Mirza.

I’m a security engineer, and on my own time I build software for parents — tools that help kids and teens grow judgment, not just live behind limits. This is my corner of the web: what I’m building, where I came from, and what I’m into. No feed, no noise.

Who I am

I started in DIY security — jailbreaking and unlocking iPhones, running a little business called iPhone_geekz. In 2015 I moved into application security for real, then abroad: a few years in Zurich, then enterprise security at a large financial company. These days I work where security meets AI safety.

Part of why I’m building my own thing now is close to home. I’ve got three young kids, and it’s clearer every year that the internet isn’t what it was ten years ago. I’d rather help build the judgment they’ll need than hand them a wall. That’s what Rooted Reality is.

What I’m building

Rooted Reality is local-first software for parents of kids and teens. It runs on your own devices, and household data never leaves the house. The public pieces are live and free to read; the desktop app that ties them together is still being built, and I haven’t launched to the public yet.

rootedreality.com

LAW MAP LIVE
APPS LIBRARY LIVE
DESKTOP GUARDIAN BUILDING
PUBLIC LAUNCH TODO
Where I came from

The security habit started early — taking things apart to see how they worked.

iPhone_geekz
EARLY
A small business I started young, jailbreaking and carrier-unlocking iPhones. I worked with SIM interposers like R-SIM — boards that sit between the carrier SIM and the baseband and man-in-the-middle the signaling so a locked phone accepts another carrier. It’s where I first did mobile security by hand.
OWASP Mobile Security Testing Guide
2017
Contributor to the industry-standard guide for testing mobile application security — still the reference the field uses.
Into application security
2015 →
Made it my profession in 2015 — web and mobile appsec, then enterprise security, and lately the place where security meets AI safety.
What’s next

Getting back into OWASP contribution — this time on the AI-safety side. It’s where I come from and where the field is going, and it’s the kind of work I’d rather do than talk about.

How I work
Your home is the boundary.
Household data never leaves the house. Guardian runs local-first — nothing uploaded, ever.
Judgment, not just limits.
Readiness has a finish line: the goal is a capable teenager, not a permanent leash.
Show your work.
Every claim links to its source — youth-safety law tied to the statute, app reviews with citations, a published rubric.
Do it right when nobody’s checking.
The research agent names itself, publishes its crawl policy, and honors robots.txt — I fetched California’s statutes by hand because their site says no to bots.
What I’m into

A few things I do when I’m not at a keyboard:

Reach me

mirza@mirzaaa.com · LinkedIn · Rooted Reality

This page is one file. System fonts, no CDN, no trackers, zero external requests. It keeps no data about you — no analytics, no cookies. The boundary starts at home, including this one.

MIRZA ALI · mirzaaa.com · REV 2026.07 · LAST VERIFIED 2026-07-07