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Every year, I embed the same video.

And I go around saying this all day, every year.

Here’s to a wonderful day!
May all your dreams come true

xo Keri

Smarten Up, Internet (the security side of this blog), sponsored a screening of the hacker movie, Reboot, Saturday night of Hack3rCon 2012 Charleston, West Virginia.  How’s that for an SEO-friendly sentence.

Set within a dystopian world that is a collision between technology and humanity, “Reboot” touches upon many of the current social and political concerns that arise from becoming more and more intertwined with the virtual.

In contemporary Los Angeles, a young female hacker (Stat) awakens from unconsciousness to find an iPhone glued to her hand and a mysterious countdown ticking away on the display. Suffering from head trauma, and with little recollection of who she is or what is happening, Stat races against time to figure out what the code means, and what unknown event the pending zero-hour will bring.

It’s beautifully shot, a great premise, some of the Metasploit is sloppy, I heard it was a Kickstarter project, and the video editor in me would have reduced it down, but the beginning is really good.  If you watch only that part, do, it’ll make you think.

Click here for future screenings.

It’s a small car, but it’s not.

A tall, beefy person could fit comfortably in the front seat.  Next time you walk by one, look at its height.

Fun to drive, bigger than you think, get a manual.

The back seat is large; here’s a full-sized stool I brought home.

See how much height there still is? Also see how the back seats is a bench that folds away. A lot can be squished into a Fit.

But it’s still small enough, that you can go places an SUV could not.

It’s a small car, but it’s not. Honda Fit

Press cars are very rarely manual.

I don’t get it. And dumb.  This was a treat.

I like to park somewhere, push back the seat and daydream, people watch or read.

SecTor: Illuminating the Black Art of Security.

Above is the vendor area, and below is the lunch keynote, the talk I was most looking forward to.

Meet Charlie Miller, one of the world’s best hackers, and, leading expert in a personal favourite topic, NFC.

NFC – Near Field Communication. You likely haven’t heard much about NFC yet, but you will.

Think of those ads on TV, where you put your phone next to your buddy’s, and photo gets beamed over wirelessly. That’s NFC. Charlie has figured out how to use NFC to hack your phone; here he is in action (green shirt).

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He brushes close to the victim’s phone, and tada – Charlie can now access and download all the photos, contacts, files, make it call and text… and nothing AT ALL appears on the victim’s phone that would alert him this is happening.

Andorid users: you are, as always, the most susceptible to this attack. Best defense – check ‘yes I want to approve each NFC connection before it happens’.

He also said this, which is so true:

“Real hacking is sitting in your basement watching a phone change every 10 or 20 seconds.” -@0xcharlie at #sectorca

— Steve Werby (@stevewerby) October 2, 2012

 This is what hacking looks like.

And this.

Not all all like that famous Swordfish movie scene, eh.

Above is a contest called, ‘Capture the Flag’; there’s one at most conferences.

I saw a basketball playing robots.

And a lockpick village.

I’ll show you what using those tools looks like on video sometime. Like hacking, it is not at all like in the movies.

Went upstairs for a sunlight break.

SecTor is happening again today, click here for detials.

If you’re intersted in getting into information security, this is your opportunity. It’s a friendly, and resource-rich environment, in an fast-growing industry that has an almost 100% employment rate.

Thanks for a great time, SecTor, and congratulations on your 6th and largest year  to date!

SecTor – Canada’s premiere information security conference

For a sense of what my day will be like, read my posts, This is BlackHat Security Conference 2012 and Apple’s First Ever Talk at Black Hat,

Hi SecTor, nice to meet you.  I blog about security for the end-user, 

think of the housewives of Idaho.

You might enjoy my ‘DefCon 19 Interview Series‘, and click here for all security blog stuff in one place.

See you at the conference!

Keri

The Black Hat Briefings - the world’s largest computer security conference.  In its 15th year, it’s held each year in Vegas at the end of July.

Me and my press badge.  Proud.

Same as when I attended last year – it’s bad manners to wave your camera about. This conference attracts all kinds.

There’s a little trick:

embedding text in a photo still gets your message out,

but without it being crawled and picked up by the bots.

There are briefings and trainings. Not much point to me attending the latter, I’d be so lost, the biggest brains give these. The briefings are very interesting though, here’s my report on Apple’s first ever talk, where not enough went over my head.

I listened to cyberpunk author Neil Stephenson interviewed by Brian Krebs, who is awesome. If you ever are stuck for security help check his site.

Neil’s book ‘Reamde’ is a neat premise: a virus is unleashed through a popular online game that encrypts the player’s hard drive, and holds it for ransom.

See the yellow * above? I joined the taxi line, oh wait it’s Neil, hi great talk! Know we know he has duct tape on his old-school phone, which he keeps in a pocket I’m not sure is the most secure place.

It’s okay to take photos here, this is the other half of Black Hat – the vendor area.

All the top security merchants selling their wares.

I did the same thing I did last year: started in the far corner and walked up and down every aisle, every booth. This stuff isn’t for us though, it’s for enterprises and large corporations.

Thanks for a great time Black Hat, see ya next year!

No dramatics; since Sunday night almost straight through till now. Needed it. I feel like my normal self again.

I didn’t spend all week partying, and still Vegas sucks it out of you. It’s over-the-top over-stimulating. I bet if you lived there, your life would pass by far too fast.

Like my new jogging pants? I went with a lighter grey this time.

Blog posts coming soon:

- Black Hat & DefCon
- finding silence in Vegas
- Apple’s first ever talk at Black Hat / iOS Security
- my trip to Vegas – includes GPS map of my Saturday night that’s awesome

Hope it was a good Tuesday, TTYT!