Dafydd Stuttard

Dafydd Stuttard is a British security researcher and software developer best known for creating Burp Suite, one of the most widely used web application penetration-testing platforms, and for founding PortSwigger, the company built around it. He used "PortSwigger" as a personal online handle before carrying the name over to the business.

From personal tool to company

Between 2003 and 2006, Stuttard built a set of standalone utilities to automate manual web security testing tasks. An early version of what became Burp Intruder was released in June 2003, followed the same year by Burp Proxy and, in 2004, an application-aware crawler called Burp Spider. In August 2005 he unified these tools into a single interface as Burp Suite v1.0. He continued developing the toolkit largely alone for several years before formalizing the business: PortSwigger Ltd was incorporated in England on 9 October 2008, with Stuttard listed as a director and, until 2012, also as company secretary. UK corporate filings show him still serving as a director as of 2026, alongside other directors and Rebecca Jane Stuttard, who has also held a director role since 2015.

Author and researcher

In 2007, Stuttard co-authored, with Marcus Pinto, The Web Application Hacker's Handbook: Discovering and Exploiting Security Flaws (Wiley), which codified much of the testing methodology built into Burp Suite and became a widely cited reference for web penetration testers. A substantially revised second edition, subtitled Finding and Exploiting Security Flaws, followed in 2011. He has also published shorter technical research, including a 2007 paper on DNS pinning and browser/proxy interactions, and PortSwigger blog posts introducing major Burp features such as Sequencer, Infiltrator, and Collaborator.

Later role

As PortSwigger grew from a one-person side project into a company with a dedicated research team — led since the mid-2010s by James Kettle — Stuttard's public role shifted from sole toolsmith toward company figurehead; a July 2020 PortSwigger "Ask Me Anything" livestream introduced him explicitly as "Burp Suite creator." Verifiable public sources say little about his life outside this work: UK corporate records give his year and month of birth as October 1972 and his nationality as British, and note he holds a doctoral title ("Dr"), but his field of study, earlier education, and any employment prior to Burp are not confirmed in public records available for this article and should be treated as unknown rather than assumed.

PortSwigger reportedly remained privately held and profitable for 17 years before taking its first outside investment, a $112 million funding round, in 2024 — by which point Burp Suite had become a standard tool in bug bounty programs, penetration-testing certifications, and PortSwigger's own free Web Security Academy training platform.

Timeline

• 1972Born in October 1972 (per UK Companies House officer records); exact date and place not publicly confirmed.
• 2003Begins building Burp as personal tooling; an early version of Burp Intruder is released in June, followed by Burp Proxy.
• 2004Releases Burp Spider, an application-aware web crawler.
• 2005-08Unifies his tools into a single interface, launching Burp Suite v1.0.
• 2007Co-authors the first edition of The Web Application Hacker's Handbook with Marcus Pinto (Wiley).
• 2008-10-09PortSwigger Ltd is incorporated in England; Stuttard becomes a director and company secretary.
• 2011Second edition of The Web Application Hacker's Handbook is published.
• 2013-10-04Publishes the retrospective blog post "Burp Through the Ages" on PortSwigger's site.
• 2020-07-09Appears in a PortSwigger "Ask Me Anything" YouTube livestream billed as Burp Suite's creator.
• 2024-06PortSwigger raises $112 million in its first outside funding round after years of bootstrapped growth; Stuttard remains a listed director.