NotAwful.Security

This is part two of my travel blog for going to BlackHatUSA and DEF CON. Part one covered travel and first-time-attender tips in point-form, and you can read it here . In this post I am going to speak about my experience at DEF CON and, without names, the people that I met there. The post will be broken up into topics rather than chronologically. This has been difficult to sit down and write because of a lot of interpersonal drama that happened on Twitter and in the convention halls that I, frankly, don't want to discuss again. I wanted to talk about things that did not have to do with the drama. First Impressions After I arrived at the Ceasers on Thursday, I met up with some people and had to deal with that . I had been explaining who I was to everyone that I already knew online for a couple days at BlackHatUSA and had become increasingly comfortable with the process. Approaching people, though, never got easier, but I learned to introduce myself and follow with my twitter...

I recently returned from a trip to Vegas to attend BlackHatUSA 2017 and DEF CON 25. While writing my travel blog I realized that I had a lot of stories, and a lot of travel advice. After working on it a little I decided it would be most useful to post the advice and stories separately. This post will contain all my advice for navigating your first DEF CON adventure. I will share stories in future posts. I am going to jump straight in because I have a lot to share here. Packing Never check bags if you can avoid it. Prevents loss, theft, or mishandling. If you check bags, keep all your valuables on you. Pack light; leave room for treasure. If you plan on collecting lots of treasure then pack an ultralight duffel in your carry-on. They pack small, you can check it on the trip home. Personal item should be a cross-body bag or backpack. Put your electronics and valuables in it. Carry-on item should be a frameless soft-bodied item. It’ll hold toiletries and clothes; all your valuab...

You have probably seen the twitter posts about the lasers and smoke machines on display at BlackHatUSA's Keynote speech on Wednesday. If you have not then I can give you the very quick run-down on that: Last-gen/old hackers, who are very anti-conformist and anti-corporate, turned their noses up because BlackHatUSA's keynote speech showed how much bank they made. Holla holla get dolla And why shouldn't they? The Briefings Pass, that would get you into all of the talks, runs for $2095 USD if you ordered before May 10th, and $2795 USD if you bought a ticket at the door. Trainings Passes were also expensive with additional costs for workshops you attended. Jeff Moss, the founder of BlackHatUSA and DEF CON, admitted that BlackHatUSA is a conference aimed at professionals and is premium-priced for large corporations because DEF CON's low barrier to entry made it harder for employees to sell to their bosses. While many old-school hackers stopped paying attention the m...

When I am passionate about something I am almost always very loud about it. There are a lot of conversations about people "panhandling" for money to travel to BlackHatUSA 2017 and DEFCON 25. Most of the conversations I've seen are dominated by people being very vocal against people crowdfunding any part of their trip, right down to someone who paid travel, lodgings, and tickets out of pocket and couldn't afford food while in Vegas. " How dare they ask if anyone wants to give him some money so they eat? " - Aristocrats, probably I am going to talk about conference travel, barriers, and elitism. A Quick Note On Elitism I wrote a thread on twitter, here , regarding high-priced certificates being used as arbitrary barriers to entry into the field of information security. Halfway through that thread I talked about networking, here , and how the combination of high-barrier to entry and side-stepping traditional hiring processes through networking created...