Tag: Nevada

Black Hat USA 2019

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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.

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

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I’m home, I’ve shaken the jetlag, and I finally feel like I’ve recovered from the sensory overload that is Las Vegas. So as promised, here’s the first of three posts about my experiences in the USA…

Las Vegas is a lot. Too much, probably. You want desert but your main course is about twice as big as the ones at home so you have no space left. You want to go to bed, but the walk back to your hotel takes you through three different casinos. And even once you reach your resort, you have to navigate your way through endless clusters of slot machines with their blinking lights and happy jingles to reach your room. Simply put, the place is exhausting, and after a week I couldn’t wait to get away and back to my own space.

At its best, Vegas is a unique experience. Where else am I going to have a cocktail served to me by a robot or spend a night wandering between casinos, gambling a little at each? Somewhere in the middle, Vegas is a sweltering, impassable sea of tourists not unlike the parts of London I deliberately avoid. And at its worst, Vegas feels almost sinister – never more so than when you notice the small details and tactics that help the place to maintain its Disneyland-like facade and convince people to part with their cash.

A view of the Strip (no post-edits here – it really is that bright)

On balance, I’m glad I had the opportunity to visit Las Vegas. It’s certainly somewhere to say that you’ve been, and I picked up a few stories that I’m sure I’ll tell anyone who’s interested for a few years to come. But unless I decide to go back to Defcon (more on that in a future post), I think it’s definitely a one-time thing. I’m not sure I could take another week dodging the crowds and having my attention pulled in all directions 24/7.

Don’t worry, though, Americans – I’ll be back. I know the Strip isn’t representative of your country, and even then, one of the positives I can take from my time in Nevada is that all the locals I spoke to were very polite and friendly. But perhaps the biggest positive from my trip is that I managed to achieve something that few people do in Sin City: I walked away from the Las Vegas casinos’ slot machines with a $10 profit in my pocket.

This is post one of three on my recent trip to Las Vegas. The next one will cover the Black Hat USA conference, and the final entry will be on the hacker get-together Defcon.

Hacker Summer Camp 2019

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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!