What I liked about Black Hat this year
THE TALKS!!
Dan Kaminsky’s It's The End of the Cache As We Know It. (come on, you know you can't help thinking 'And I Feel Fine' after reading that) Standing room only, Dan’s grandma’s session cookies, talk content, speaker energy, enthusiasm. I <3 Dan. If I could adopt a big brother, it would be Dan.
Bruce Potter’s talk on Net Flow analysis. Super interesting, well presented.
Mark Dowd and Alexander Sotirov’s talk on Bypassing Windows Vista Memory Protections. They’re wicked smaht.
LT. Col. Greg Conti’s talk on visual forensics analysis - I am a sucker for visual representation of any data...
Christopher Hoff's Four Horsemen of the Virtualizaton Security Apocolypse.
I know, my review of the talks is pretty light here, but I don't have to write a trip report for the general public so quitcherbitchen. If you're so interested, you should have gone to the talks yourself.
THE OTHER STUFF
Registration check in lines are sooooo much better than in years past, more lines, move faster, yay. But having a separate line to get your delegate bag is a bit inefficient for attendees.
Box lunch option. Now if only they’d offer a ‘no lunch’ ticket. I don’t even care if it costs the same as a ‘with lunch’ registration. I never eat at the con, whether it’s a box lunch or plated meal. I feel bad wasting the food.
Overall, compared to when I first started attending Black Hat many years ago, the con feels more professional. Talks start and end pretty much on time, I didn’t see any real AV difficulties, logistically things seemed pretty smooth. Awwww, Black Hat is growing up!
Lobster and crab dumpling things, sushi, and sliders at a vendor party. Best party food all week.
The conference continues to grow and mature. I’m excited to see that, big conferences are a great initiation ground for new security professionals who may not know about or understand yet the value of smaller cons like ShmooCon or Toorcon, and a great ‘reunion’ spot for people who may talk via IM/Twitter/Facebook/MySpace/IRC/email/whatever all the time but only see each other IRL a few times a year at cons. But the size of Black Hat is a blessing and a curse. You see everyone in one place, where you might only see half as many people you want to at a smaller con. But everyone is circulating so there isn’t time for talking with any one person very much.
Wall of Sheep. A DefCon staple, nice to see it at Black Hat too. Baaaaaaaaa.
Not really about Black Hat, but a Vegas thing: there is now one cab company that takes credit cards in Vegas. w00t. I hate carrying cash.
$32K raised for EFF between Black Hat and Defcon. nice.
Several people arranged hotel suite Rock Band parties in the evenings. That is awesome. !..!,
See y’all again in 2009. Wouldn’t miss it.
Dan Kaminsky’s It's The End of the Cache As We Know It. (come on, you know you can't help thinking 'And I Feel Fine' after reading that) Standing room only, Dan’s grandma’s session cookies, talk content, speaker energy, enthusiasm. I <3 Dan. If I could adopt a big brother, it would be Dan.
Bruce Potter’s talk on Net Flow analysis. Super interesting, well presented.
Mark Dowd and Alexander Sotirov’s talk on Bypassing Windows Vista Memory Protections. They’re wicked smaht.
LT. Col. Greg Conti’s talk on visual forensics analysis - I am a sucker for visual representation of any data...
Christopher Hoff's Four Horsemen of the Virtualizaton Security Apocolypse.
I know, my review of the talks is pretty light here, but I don't have to write a trip report for the general public so quitcherbitchen. If you're so interested, you should have gone to the talks yourself.
THE OTHER STUFF
Registration check in lines are sooooo much better than in years past, more lines, move faster, yay. But having a separate line to get your delegate bag is a bit inefficient for attendees.
Box lunch option. Now if only they’d offer a ‘no lunch’ ticket. I don’t even care if it costs the same as a ‘with lunch’ registration. I never eat at the con, whether it’s a box lunch or plated meal. I feel bad wasting the food.
Overall, compared to when I first started attending Black Hat many years ago, the con feels more professional. Talks start and end pretty much on time, I didn’t see any real AV difficulties, logistically things seemed pretty smooth. Awwww, Black Hat is growing up!
Lobster and crab dumpling things, sushi, and sliders at a vendor party. Best party food all week.
The conference continues to grow and mature. I’m excited to see that, big conferences are a great initiation ground for new security professionals who may not know about or understand yet the value of smaller cons like ShmooCon or Toorcon, and a great ‘reunion’ spot for people who may talk via IM/Twitter/Facebook/MySpace/IRC/email/whatever all the time but only see each other IRL a few times a year at cons. But the size of Black Hat is a blessing and a curse. You see everyone in one place, where you might only see half as many people you want to at a smaller con. But everyone is circulating so there isn’t time for talking with any one person very much.
Wall of Sheep. A DefCon staple, nice to see it at Black Hat too. Baaaaaaaaa.
Not really about Black Hat, but a Vegas thing: there is now one cab company that takes credit cards in Vegas. w00t. I hate carrying cash.
$32K raised for EFF between Black Hat and Defcon. nice.
Several people arranged hotel suite Rock Band parties in the evenings. That is awesome. !..!,
See y’all again in 2009. Wouldn’t miss it.
Labels: black hat, conferences, conti, dowd, hoff, kaminsky, potter, security, sotirov, vegas, wall of sheep
posted by Elphaba at 10:27 AM
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