DEFCON 17: a late write up
This year's DEFCON was quite amazing, apparently 10k people showed up in the Riviera for it. This is a late write up because everybody knows already about the fake ATM and the RFID reader near the Wall of Sheep, on the other hand, not everybody knows about other things that also took place. By the way, this is how the back side of one of the ATMs at the conference looked like:
The truth is that you would need 2 or 3 duplicates to get to do all the stuff that you want to do. There are just too many talks, contests and random stuff going on that it is not possible to cover it all. Anyway, below is a breakdown of the talks I managed to get in.
Popularity: 2% [?]
DeepSec 2008
DeepSec 2008 took place in Vienna in November. For a period of two days attendees enjoyed a good set of talks, a good atmosphere and had the chance to talk to different people from different security backgrounds.
I was invited to present my 'Behind Enemy lines' research, which mainly focused on different attack techniques that are currently affecting a large number of administrative web interfaces.
The slides of this presentation can be found here: [1]
More information about this research can be found in the following white paper: [3] [4]
Popularity: 4% [?]
DEFCON 16 – Las Vegas 2008
hack-fu by Matt Hillman
Last week I attended DEFCON 16 in Las Vegas. I went last year as well, so I knew to expect the huge throngs of people, the strange mix of young, old, and crazy-haired and all the usual antics that happens when you gather around 7 thousand hackers in one place.
There's a lot to do at DEFCON besides attending presentations, but this year I was there for business not just pleasure, so I went on a presentation-attending marathon. I must admit that this year there were less "wow" moments as far as the talks were concerned, but there were still some decent talks ands of course lots of opportunities to catch up with friends and acquaintances from around the world.
Here's a list and some comments of the talks I attended:
Popularity: 7% [?]
Black Hat Europe 2008
I have just arrived from Black Hat Europe 2008 in Amsterdam (this one, not this one). It has been a cool experience, not exactly what I expected but really interesting.
Briefings were held during the 27th and 28th of March, and the presentations are available for download. If you want to see what the chef recommends just keep reading... 
Popularity: 6% [?]