Meet the Ona – Cristian Scraba

All month long, our ‘Meet the Ona’ series has highlighted the incredible researchers at the heart of the Onapsis Research Labs. After hearing from Ema, Paul, and Yvan, we’re wrapping up Cybersecurity Awareness Month with our final installment. Meet Senior Offensive Security Researcher, Cristian.

Please introduce yourself to the rest of the Tribe and share a little about your background – could be family, where you live, current role etc.

Hello, my name is Cristian Scraba and I currently live in Bucharest, Romania. I have been part of the Onapsis Research Labs for the last year and a half and my main task is to identify new zero-day vulnerabilities in business applications.

Please share your journey / story.  What brought you to Onapsis?

I have been working in the cybersecurity field since I finished college, 4 years ago, but I have loved cracking video games, hacking my friends’ PCs for fun and doing related stuff since before high school. Onapsis simply posted a job that matched my area of expertise and interest. I still have a lot to learn in this field and I am incredibly grateful to be in a role where I can both grow and develop my knowledge and at the same time do the work that I enjoy the most.

In your spare time, what motivates you / drives you?

I like to play online team-based video games with my friends. We play for fun, but I must say that our game has improved a lot over time. I think it is a great way to have fun and stay connected, and what truly drives me is the process of working together to overcome a challenge. It requires constant, clear communication and the ability to adapt our strategy on the fly. It’s a fun mirroring version of what makes a professional project team successful: everyone has a role, we have to support each other, and we all succeed or fail together.  And I’m proud to report that our post-game-loss friendship survival rate is holding steady at 100%.

How do you bring your personal values to work with you?

I value collaboration. I truly believe in the saying: “teamwork makes the dreamwork”. My work often requires creativity and thinking outside the box, so a different perspective is always very valuable. As an example, I was working on a project, found one vulnerability in an application and started implementing a PoC for it. When I talked about it with a teammate he thought about it in a completely different way and the impact of it was much larger than I first thought, so I needed to rethink the PoC. Talking with the team, exchanging ideas and collaborating is very important in order to have the best results.

Is there an Ona value that resonates with you most?

Hack it. Onapsis Research Labs is a team of hackers. Jokes aside, in my opinion I have a good attention to detail, near the wrong side of perfectionism. I always want to improve and each time make things a little bit better.

Why is Onapsis the place where you share your talents?

Simple. Onapsis is providing a place where you can expand your knowledge and  grow professionally.

What advice do you have for Onas wanting to pursue a dream or challenge personally or professionally?

Try to learn from failures, your own and others’. Failures can be valuable feedback. Treat the journey as a learning experience.

What is next for you?

My current focus is on expanding my knowledge and skills in the cybersecurity field. In the mid-term I plan to contribute to an important research that is impactful enough in the industry in order to present it at a conference like Black Hat.

In your opinion, how does Cybersecurity Awareness Month positively impact our industry and consumers as a whole?

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is an important annual event because it elevates security to a top-of-mind priority for everyone. It champions the idea that even small, individual actions—like enabling multi-factor authentication—can create a significant, collective improvement in our overall security posture.