As the summer heat intensifies in the United States, so does the excitement for the annual Hacker Summer Camp, which includes the highly anticipated Black Hat and DEFCON 2024. This year, I had the chance to participate in reviewing conferences and organizing events for several activities at Hacker. Summer Camp 2024. I’m excited to participate in a variety of activities, from leading training sessions to moderating panels and organizing a hackathon. Additionally, several sessions caught my attention, promising to be both enlightening and transformative. Here’s a look at my busy schedule and the sessions I’m looking forward to.
While my company has covered our collective activities in another blog post, I wanted to focus this post on my personal involvement and the sessions I look forward to attending.
I had the privilege of serving on the CFP Examination Committee committee to:
- Black hat USA 2024
- Opponent’s Village @DEFCON 32
- Cloudy Village @ DEFCON 32
- Reconnaissance Village @ DEFCON 32
In addition to this, I have also contributed my ideas to the community side of Black Hat USA.
Here are the activities I am personally participating in during this time. I would love for you to attend these events and say hello:
Now let’s move on to some must-see event discussions. Before listing them, I would like to emphasize that the entire program is of impeccable quality. These are simply my personal favorites based on my interests and areas of focus. Every lecture scheduled at the events has already proven to be among the best in its class.
Top 10 discussions not to be missed at Black Hat 2024
- Practical LLM Safety: Takeaways from a Year in the Trenches by Richard Harang: LLMs have been the talk of the town, a discussion from the trenches is a good idea to start on this topic.
- Breach of AWS accounts via ghost resources and at Defcon: Ghost resources have always been a threat
- The trio of Portswigger discussions: James and his team have always contributed significantly to the advancement of web attack techniques.
- Not Just for Aspirants: Personal Branding is Crucial for Career Advancement by Ricki Burke. This session is a must for anyone looking to stand out.
- Fireside Chat with Moxie and Jeff: Two titans of IT security, their conversation is sure to spark ideas and thought-provoking questions.
- Community Session: Career Outlook from Technical Roles to Strategic Leadership Jason Haddix, Ricki Burke, Sherri Davidoff, Lukasz Gogolkiewicz: A panel discussion on the transition from technical roles to management. Essential for understanding leadership journeys and challenges.
- Community Session: From Interest to Insight: How to Identify and Explore Your Research Topic Stefano Zanero, James Kettle, Natasha Silvanovich, Panelists: Renowned researchers discuss how to choose a research topic, providing insights for beginning researchers and seasoned.
- Crashing the Party: Vulnerabilities in RPKI Validation by Niklas Vogel, Donika Mirdita, Haya Schulmann, Michael Waidner: Focused on RPKI protocol vulnerabilities and their impact on Internet security, more importantly, how a DoS/crash attack can shut down the Internet.
- Self-Hosted GitHub CI/CD Executors: Continuous Integration, Continuous Destruction by Adnan Khan, John Stawinski: Covers attacks on CI/CD pipelines, specifically targeting self-hosted GitHub executors, with a focus on risks and mitigation strategies.
- Flipping Bits: Your credentials are definitely mine by STÖK STÖK, Joona Hoikkala: typos/name confusion on steroids 😛
This year, Black Hat has introduced track meets where review committee members from specific tracks will be present for discussions. If you are interested in AI/LLM, reverse engineering, embedded hardware/systems or mobile, these meetings are unmissable events.
For those looking to take home something immediately usable, the entrances to Black Hat Arsenal and the DEFCON Demonstration Labs are must-visits. Here are some key recommendations:
DEFCON placed emphasis on hands-on events this year, providing participants with hands-on experience. Here are the main conferences and events in the village:
Cloud Village
Full program here
Opponent’s Village
Full program here
- Practical workshop: The power of purple
- Tech Talk: Sneaky Extensions – The Escape Artists MV3
Reconnaissance Village
Hacker Summer Camp 2024 promises to be an event filled with learning, collaboration and innovation. I am excited to contribute with my contributions while soaking up knowledge from the sessions I attend. Stay tuned for detailed updates and event information as I dive deep into the world of cybersecurity at Hacker 2024!
PS The Indian conference space is disrupted this year, but it looks like we will have a very busy November. Stay tuned for more in another blog post.