Well, alien Andrew is in full control. I was up at 4.30 am on Saturday morning, and again this morning. Unfortunately, on Saturday, I crashed about 8.30 am and slept to near 2 pm.
I went to DefCon at 3 pm to meet with Brenda from the Trike team. We had a good discussion on the approach to Trike for larger apps and how Trike might be suitable for inclusion into OWASP materials.
At 4 pm, I met with Meredith and Robert from the u. Iowa Dejection project. I went back to Meredith’s hotel room and we had a very long and interesting discussion on the future of their project and many other topics. I bounced a few ideas off them. All in all, this was the best and most useful part of DefCon for me – the networking with clueful people.
DefCon has been very disappointing. What the hell are folks working on? DefCon 13 has nothing really new or exciting. All the attacks I’ve seen (or reviewed in the PPTs on the CD-ROM) are derivative and boring. There’s so much web app sec stuff occuring and DefCon schedules not a single session, and yet has four back to back sessions on physical security on lame devices like door locks and safes. If we made encraption as bad as the average door lock or cabinet we’d be laughed out of the house. I can’t believe that people think that this stuff is bleeding edge.
So today, I’m going to meet up with some folks from newbeetle.org – Jen and Chris, rather than sweat it out in any of the remaining sessions. The CTF competition is winding down behind me as I write, and the drum and bass sound track is getting thin. The geek next to me is listening to his own stuff rather than be pummelled by the incessant driving bass. Defcon needs good DJs who are aware of the many styles other than D&B. I love techno music, and this stuff is repetitive crap.
The other thing that really really pisses me off is the smoking. WTF were the organizers thinking? There’s like 5% of the attendees smoking and they are making this room unbearable despite aircon working overtime. I’m going on a serious crop dusting mission soon. I love dropping my guts right around an active smoker. The dead thing emissions from my nether regions are nothing to the foul deadly particulate stream that I now stink of, thanks very much.
The worst part is that outside is literally just 5 – 10 metres away. They could kill themselves out there and not harm me and the other 95% of the participants.
If I come again, I’ll find a reliable source of onion rings so my crop dusting missions will be all the more fruitful. I have to spread the love.
I have to be at the airport for 5.45 to make it back to LAX in time for my late night 16 and a bit hour flight to Australia. I miss out on Monday altogether. Oh well. I had two Tuesdays this week.
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