Tag: Technology

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.

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!

I, Robot – Reason

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I’m making an effort to get around to films, books, and music I’ve always meant to try, but have never made the time for. Next in line is science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, whose collection of short stories I, Robot was sitting on the shelf of a local charity shop. It took me a while to get to grips with his style, but now I’m nearing the end I’m gripped.

A story that surprised me was Reason – one that moves beyond science fiction to allude to arguments around philosophy, religion, free will, and the meaning of life. It centres around a test of the robot Cutie, designed to run a space station, who refuses to obey human commands and is subservient only to what it calls “The Master”. It converts the outpost’s entire robotic crew to its ideology, and essentially holds the humans hostage.

I, Robot covers – all of them cooler than the one I have

But by the end, Cutie’s operators realise that there’s no point in reeducating the robot. While they have been held captive, the station has been run perfectly well – they reason that Cutie was following the second law of robotics, knowing that humans would come to harm if it wasn’t. They even reason that future robots should spend time with Cutie to learn to serve The Master before they are deployed elsewhere.

There’s more to the story than this (go and read it!), but it raises many interesting questions. How can we be sure of our origins? Are our motivations really our own, or are our actions part of a bigger plan? And do our intentions matter, or is it purely our outcomes and their impact that we should be concerned with? Asimov’s work has made me want to pick up the philosophy classics I studied as a teenager again…

Welcome

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Here it is: another blog. I have no firm plans for this one – it’ll act more like a scrapbook for random thoughts and things that make me think on any given day.

I exist elsewhere on the internet (just about – although I have no concerns about this blog being linked to my identity), but fancied a fresh start. I previously put a lot of pressure on myself to blog about this certain topic this many times a month, and it led to a lot of stress – especially when life got in the way and I went off-schedule.

So what should you expect? I don’t know for sure, but I work in technology and like to tinker in my spare time, so I’m likely to write about my personal projects as well as news in the industry and things I read and hear online.

I’m even less certain of what I hope to get out of this, but it would be nice to get a little community of fellow geeks going. So if you’re interested in what you read, follow the blog and say hi. I’d be glad to have a chat about all things tech!