DeepSec and DeepINTEL Schedule is currently in Review – Preliminary Schedule will be published soon

René Pfeiffer/ August 1, 2022/ Conference

Our calls for papers have official closed. We are currently in the final phase of reviewing all your submissions. Thanks for all your efforts to send us your material on time. Our goal is to publish the preliminary schedule within the next two weeks. In case you missed the deadline, we will still accept your submissions. You can use our call for papers manager to send us your proposal. We will review your contribution. We will just start with all earlier submissions first.

DeepSec, DeepINTEL, and ROOTS Call for Papers still open!

René Pfeiffer/ July 8, 2022/ Conference

Did you find some interesting bugs lately? Have you broken something which wasn’t supposed to be broken? Can you hack a nation state just by using a phone call? Do you dream of writing a smartphone app in Malbolge just for fun? If the answer is yes, then you should definitely submit a presentation for DeepSec 2022! We are still looking for your contribution. Share your insights, enlighten our audience. We are also looking for talks for DeepINTEL 2022. We would like to explore the geopolitical side of information security again. Attacks on critical infrastructure, gauging capabilities of adversaries, digital operations in terms of disinformation, and strategic defence of digital infrastructure are the focus of our next security intelligence event. If you work in this field, please get in touch with us. Security research

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IT Energy Security – Electric Power makes Cyber go around

René Pfeiffer/ April 1, 2022/ Conference

This is not a typical 1 April posting. We have stopped the habit of writing satirical articles, because the actual news stories are better than any comedy these days.  Instead of having a laugh, let’s look at the core of information technology – electrical power. The energy prices have been rising for a while now. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put Europe’s supply of fossil fuels into the spotlight, because it is used to force political decisions. Using renewable energy sources could have been sped up twenty years ago. It hasn’t. Now the price for electrical power is rising. Information technology relies on electrical power. Computers, servers, networks, smartphones, and display devices can’t do without. The same goes for information security. Adding countermeasures to defend your digital assets and to introduce secure coding requires

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Information Warfare

René Pfeiffer/ March 17, 2022/ Conference

[This is the March update from our DeepSec scuttlebutt mailing list. Subscribers received this article already.] Filling a blog with articles is both hard and very easy these days. In theory, information security is more present in the news than ever. In practice, you will find few articles with in-depth content. A few days ago I had a discussion with a friend about the many web pages with the title scheme “n reasons why something is great” or “k ways to do web application filtering”. We both agreed that the title is a definite warning not to read the article. Also, most articles just give you a brief introduction into a topic and suddenly end after a few paragraphs. The term clickbait comes to mind. A lot of publishing systems use fancy techniques to

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To Join or not to Join a Cyberwar – Hacking Back and Hack Attacks

René Pfeiffer/ March 1, 2022/ Conference

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put the digital sidelines into the spotlight. The world of cyber is part of conflicts, politics, and military operations. This has become very clear if you look for preparations of the current military actions in Ukraine. Information warfare most likely predates the tanks and missiles by year or even decades. This is not the focus of this article. There have been calls to attack networked targets in order to help. Is this a good idea? Let’s see. Information warfare is one aspect of the digital domain. Then there are sabotage, disrupting networks, exploiting vulnerabilities, getting access to data, and many more aspects. Joining either side of a conflict is usually a bad idea. Everything starts with the targets. Who runs a system you have decided to attack? It’s

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Sven Guckes has died

René Pfeiffer/ February 23, 2022/ Conference

Sven Guckes has died. Sven was a constant companion of Free Software events throughout the years. He contributed to Free Software projects in many way. He ceaselessly connected people by organising meetings in restaurants prior to, during, and after conferences. The command line was his home. He helped improve Vim configurations for countless persons and enabled them to use this editor more efficiently. Sven was session chair at past DeepSec conferences. We mourn his loss, and we fondly remember his contribution to transferring knowledge and experience between everyone he connected. Thanks, Sven! Others have published their thoughts about Sven. You can find the texts by using the following links: Remember: Be More Like Sven Sven Juckes passed away Vim-Versteher und Kommandozeilenerklärer: Sven Guckes ist tot (German) Vim 9 will be dedicated to Sven Guckes

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DeepSec Season Greetings – Slides and Videos

René Pfeiffer/ December 23, 2021/ Conference

We have been radio-silent for the past weeks, because we had to post-process the conference. The videos of DeepSec 2020 have been completed and uploaded to Vimeo. You can view them in our showcase collection for the event. We hope you can find some quiet moments in the next few days. The slides of the presentations are stored on our web server. We haven’t hidden any Log4Shell emoticons in the documents, so they are safe to view. 😉 Enjoy the holidays! See you next year!