Olivia Bennett

Olivia Bennett is a Blockchain Security Researcher at CryptoGrows with a background that straddles traditional cybersecurity and decentralized systems. Before entering journalism, Olivia spent five years in offensive security — first as a penetration tester at Trail of Bits, where she worked on protocol-level vulnerability research, and later as a senior smart contract auditor at CertiK, where she reviewed code securing billions of dollars in on-chain assets. Her white-hat history includes responsible disclosures on six production DeFi protocols. One of those disclosures — a reentrancy variant in a cross-chain bridge — prevented an estimated $40 million exploit and was publicly acknowledged by the protocol's development team. She maintains an active presence on competitive audit platforms and has earned top-ten finishes in several high-profile Code4rena contests. Olivia holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh and professional certifications in offensive security (OSCP) and blockchain technology from the University of California, Berkeley Extension. She transitioned to crypto journalism to bring technical rigor to public reporting on security incidents — an area she felt was often covered superficially, with journalists repeating protocol statements without independently analyzing the exploit mechanics. At CryptoGrows, Olivia writes exploit post-mortems, audit report analyses, and educational content on smart contract security patterns. She is committed to helping retail investors evaluate protocol risk before depositing funds, and her "Security Score" column has become a trusted reference for DeFi participants assessing new opportunities. She also runs a monthly live-stream walkthrough of newly published audit reports, making security research accessible to a non-technical audience.