Stopped by the SC Congress Conference

Jun 12 2013

SC Congress is a top-tier Canadian annual online security conference in Toronto.

Sat in on Derrick Webber’s keynote, a good overview of the current state of things, and then he simulated some attacks.

The attack is he’s sent the target a phishing email that contains a link he wants them to click (“This is Gmail, change your password right away”). He’s cloned the Gmail login page, and then captures the victim’s password.

The defence against phishing emails and social engineering like this, is to listen to your gut, and to look closely at the URL you’re about to click.

Got some good blog post ideas, some great NFC content (don’t walk around with it turned on), and as always, the cocktail party is the most fun part. Nice to see some old faces, and good meeting new ones.

I'm at SecTor Today

Oct 2 2012

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

This is Black Hat Security Conference 2012

Aug 7 2012

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.