About René Pfeiffer

System administrator, lecturer, hacker, security consultant, technical writer and DeepSec organisation team member. Has done some particle physics, too. Prefers encrypted messages for the sake of admiring the mathematical algorithms at work.

2302, 2022

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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2202, 2022

DeepSec 2022 – Call for Papers is open

René Pfeiffer/ February 22, 2022/ Call for Papers

We have been busy behind the scenes, as always. The call for papers for DeepSec 2022 is open. We accept submissions for presentations and trainings. This also includes ROOTS 2022 and DeepINTEL 2022. The dates are the same as announced at the closing of DeepSec 2021. DeepSec 2022 Trainings – 15 / 16 November 2022 DeepINTEL 2022 – 16 November 2022 DeepSec 2022 / ROOTS 2022 Conference – 17 / 18 November 2022 We ask all trainers to submit proposals for trainings as early as possible. We will select submitted trainings and publish a preliminary schedule in April. Hope to see you in November!

1302, 2022

NFTs, AI, and more trend technologies

René Pfeiffer/ February 13, 2022/ Scuttlebutt

[The scuttlebutt news are also available via the DeepSec scuttlebutt mailing list. This posting was sent to the list on 10 February 2022.] Dear readers, February is a week old. Even though it is still Winter, we do not hibernate. We currently work on our call for papers and the locations for this year’s events. Following the IT news these days is no helping with selecting interesting topics. Information technology has taken a steep turn into the past. Reading product information has more in common with fantasy novels than with hard facts. Magic is hard at work given the many wonderful features modern applications may or may not have. Code based on the blockchain is getting a lot of news coverage. DeepSec deliberately did not include content this technology in our past conferences. Mentioning

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1002, 2022

Blockchain, bad data, and bad code

René Pfeiffer/ February 10, 2022/ Scuttlebutt, Security

[The scuttlebutt news are also available via the DeepSec scuttlebutt mailing list. This posting was sent to the list on 11 January 2022.] Dear readers, the pandemic is still not over. 2022 greets us with a new variant of SARS-CoV-2. I hope all of you stay safe and stay healthy. The organisation of DeepSec events continues. The wonderful world of IT has plenty of topics to research and check for security vulnerabilities. There is one issue I would like to describe in some more depth. DeepSec itself and parts of its staff and helpers have strong ties to cryptography. We supported the Crypto Party events in Vienna back in 2012. Back then, Bitcoin (₿) was three years old. It was regarded as a curiosity. For us, crypto still means cryptography. We considered accepting Bitcoin

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2312, 2021

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!

2611, 2021

DeepSec and DeepINTEL 2021 concluded, Dates for Events in 2022

René Pfeiffer/ November 26, 2021/ Conference

The last week was very exciting, Organising DeepSec and DeepINTEL 2021 right in the middle of changing regulation and travel restrictions was not easy. Both events were in in hybrid form with health protection measures. The pandemic has raised  a lot of questions on how scientific research impacts government, politics, and society. One of our main concerns is to put scientific methods back into information security. While nobody dies or contracts a disease when information security fails, there are parallels between warnings of experts and the lack of adequate means to protect the population. We have some dates for your calendar. Please make a note and set your alarm for our events next year: DeepSec IT & Law Convention – 26 April 2022 DeepSec 2022 Trainings – 15/16 November 2022 DeepSec 2022 Conference –

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1811, 2021

Talk “Analyzing Radicalization on the Internet – Method and Results of the COMRAD-Project” moved to 19 November 2021 16:50

René Pfeiffer/ November 18, 2021/ Administrivia, Conference

The presentation „Analyzing Radicalization on the Internet – Method and Results of the COMRAD-Project“ has been from today moved to 19 November 2021 at 16:50. The presentation has not been cancelled. We had to move the talk because of a collision and technical problems.

1311, 2021

Updated Health Protection Guidelines – Information about hybrid Configuration of DeepSec & DeepINTEL 2021

René Pfeiffer/ November 13, 2021/ Administrivia, Conference

The City of Vienna has announced changes to the health protection regulations. The regulations are still not in effect, but we expect them to be in place in the course of the next week. The city council is more strict than the rest of Austria, so make sure to update on local regulations. We have updated the health protection document on our web site. Basically the access to the conference is limited to persons having recovered from CVOID-19 and vaccinated persons. Additional information can be found by using one of the following links: Latest COVID-19 information Information about COVID-19 (City of Vienna) DeepSec will be at the conference hotel and feature live streams for every track. Some speakers will present remotely. All presentation will be available on site and via the streams. Links for

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0511, 2021

New health protection regulations for DeepSec and DeepINTEL 2021

René Pfeiffer/ November 5, 2021/ Conference

The City of Vienna has announced stricter regulations regarding conferences and restaurant businesses. This directly affects our conferences. Beginning with 15 November 2021, attending events requires a proof of either having recovered from a COVID-19 infection („genesen“) or be fully vaccinated („geimpft“). This is called the „2G rule“ because of the German words used for the terms. We will update our procedures for the conference accordingly. Our conference hotel has to follow the regulations as well. This means that you cannot attend either DeepSec or DeepINTEL with only a test (of any kind). There will be no exceptions. Further information can be found at the following links: What is „3G“ rule? Questions and answers regarding coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease Up-to-date Information on the Coronavirus Situation Some of the information web sites will get

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2210, 2021

Hardwear.io Interview: BlueMirror – Defeating Authentication in Bluetooth protocols

René Pfeiffer/ October 22, 2021/ Conference

Bluetooth communication has become a standard for many handheld devices, personal computers, and local area networks. Since the protocol was first published, it has gone through many improvements. Security researchers and hackers have subjected Bluetooth devices and the protocol to security tests and analysis. The most recent discovery has to do with the key agreement protocols of Bluetooth. This topic will be presented at Hardwear.io by Tristan Claverie and Jose Lopes Esteves. We have asked both of them a few questions: Bluetooth has come a long way from the first attacks almost twenty years ago. Are there fundamental design weaknesses that impact Bluetooth security up to newer protocols? If we look at recent protocols (the most recent ones being the ones standardized for Bluetooth Mesh), there is still the ability for two devices to

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2110, 2021

Hardwear.io Interview: Teardown and feasibility study of IronKey – the most secure USB Flash drive

René Pfeiffer/ October 21, 2021/ Security

Portable storage devices are small and can be easily lost. Using security measures to protect the data on them is therefore a good idea. Vendors offer USB storage devices with built-in encryption capabilities. What happens if you analyse how they work? What are the attack modes on these devices? There will be a presentation at Hardwear.io regarding a specific brand of storage devices. We have asked the author Sergei Skorobogatov about the security properties of IronKey devices. HDD and SSD vendors have provided their devices with secure deletion and encryption features. How do IronKey devices compare to normal storage media? Some HDD and SSD devices do offer encryption and secure deletion, as well as vendors of other USB Flash drives. The fundamental difference is that IronKey devices are certified with FIPS140-2 Level 3. This

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2009, 2021

Hardware Security – Hacking on the Layer 1 – Training and Conference

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2021/ Conference

In system administration there is an easy way to distinguish between software and hardware: hardware are the parts that can be kicked. This happens usually when things break. Since breaking things is a major part of security research, we have teamed up with the Hardwear.io Security Conference. The Spectre and Meltdown bugs have shown that hardware is a crucial part of everyone’s security architecture. Few software developers realise that this foundation can cause a lot of havoc. So we recommend checking out the schedule. Reverse engineering hardware can be very rewarding, because you learn a lot on how it reacts to perturbations. There will be a training at Hardwear.io on how to do this with celullar baseband firmware. This piece of code sits on the gateway to the mobile network. During the training you

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2208, 2021

Scuttlebutt – Summer in the city, reviews, and more security content

René Pfeiffer/ August 22, 2021/ Scuttlebutt

Dear readers, gossip has been a bit rare in the past weeks. This was because of the intense summer heat here in Vienna. The opposite of the chill factor made working in the hot city extremely difficult. Additionally, we tackled dealing with backend archaeology. A part of our internal application for managing the call for papers, the reviews, and the schedule celebrates its 10th birthday. I like code that runs smoothly despite platform updates, but now is the time for some changes. And no, we do not expose the code to the Internet. You can stop looking for it. 😉 We just finished the major part of reviews of the submissions. It always takes a while, given that we start with the final review in August. Contacting people during Summer adds extra round trip

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2008, 2021

Breaking News: DeepSec preliminary Schedule available, some Reviews still continue, all Hardware & Software is still not completely safe to use

René Pfeiffer/ August 20, 2021/ Conference, Schedule

We confess. Our review cycle was interrupted by a week of holiday. Our team takes turns before the fourth wave breaks. We will keep watching the regulations for travel and our conference hotel. This being said, the schedule for DeepSec 2021 is ready and is published on our web site. 🥳 The contributions from our speakers and trainers look very promising. We tried to select the submissions according to a mix of technical details, academic research, ways to improve your defence, and details of attack techniques which might be deployed against your organisation. The trainings cover a wide range of topics from attacks on modern desktops app, fallacies of mobile networks, penetration testing of industrial control systems, breaking single sign-on systems, and dealing with threats and defence. We hope to offer you in-depth knowledge

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