Black Hat USA – Stack Stubs

The trip now feels like a lifetime ago, but I’m currently midway through a series of posts about my time at Hacker Summer Camp 2019 in Las Vegas. See my last entry for my thoughts on the Strip.

By the middle of the week I’d explored most of the casinos and shopping centres on the Strip, and it was time to head to its southern extremity to attend Black Hat USA at the Mandalay Bay. This was the more corporate of the two events I was in Vegas to attend, and while there were some fairly interesting talks (the more technical of which were given again later on at Defcon), the conference element was a fairly standard affair.

The real action was on the vendor floor, which spanned a massive, hangar-like space divided up into a grid. Every security company you could think of was there, from the big players like Trend Micro and CrowdStrike to fledgling start-ups I’d never heard of before. I’ll admit that stepping into the room for the first time, with all the jargon being thrown around and salespeople wanting to scan my badge from all sides, was a bit intimidating.

The Black Hat USA vendor floor, where Carbon Black even had its own Mortal Kombat parody arcade game

After taking some time to acclimatise, however, I had a much better time. I spoke to a few companies about products and services relevant to my work, got some hands-on time with some solutions I was curious about, and gathered so much swag that I almost couldn’t fit it all in my suitcase for the flight home. Granted, much of it was ill-fitting t-shirts that I’ll only ever wear to bed, but I also got a signed copy of Penetration Testing by Georgia Wiedman, which was a much more useful and valuable item than I was expecting to find.

Black Hat also gave me my first taste of the social side of Hacker Summer Camp. I went to a couple of vendor events in the evenings, and while I maybe didn’t chat to as many people as I’d hoped to, I had a few free drinks, saw some cool stuff (the best was probably Demisto’s gin and jazz event), and got to hang out with my colleagues and do a little gambling on the way home. By the end, I was ready for Defcon to kick things up a notch…

This is post two of three on my recent trip to Las Vegas. Stay tuned next week for the thrilling conclusion, which will cover my time at the Defcon hacking conference.

It’s time for something a bit different on my fledgling little blog, as soon I’ll be heading out to Las Vegas for Black Hat USA 2019 and Defcon 27 – two events that together have become known as Hacker Summer Camp. I’m super excited – I’ve never been to an event with anywhere near so many hackers and cyber security people in one place!

The venue is set to be just as interesting as the conferences. The two events will occupy no fewer than four hotels spanning the length of the Strip, giving me plenty of opportunity to explore Vegas between talks and meetings. I’ve never even been to the United States before, so I feel like I have a lot to see (feel free to leave tips in the comments).

Probably the Vegas equivalent of a stock image of the London Eye or Parliament, but YOLO

To cover Hacker Summer Camp, I’m planning on writing three blog posts: one on my general impressions of Las Vegas, one on the corporate-focused Black Hat USA, and one on the hacking Wild West that is Defcon. I imagine there’ll be a lot to squeeze in, so they might be slightly longer than usual, and they may go up while I’m in the States or when I get back, depending on free time and the level of connectivity I have out there.

I realise there’s also a possibility that you’re reading this after I handed you a card at one of the events. If so, welcome! Please go ahead and subscribe to the blog, leave a comment below to say hello, and follow me on Instagram and Twitter if you have them. I’d love to build a little network to discuss cyber security and share cool techy stuff!