DeepSec 2012 Schedule

René Pfeiffer/ August 28, 2012/ Administrivia, Conference

The schedule for DeepSec 2012 is mostly stable (YMMV applies). We are still working on some content and will update the description. So this is the right time for you to take advantage of the early bird rates. We will describe every single workshop and presentation in our blog with an article because we want to give you more information on why we think the content is relevant and why you need to listen to the speaker. We have also contacted other security researchers for comments on the talks and will add their opinion and answer to the articles as well. Hope to see you all at DeepSec 2012!

A Word about Conference Conduct

René Pfeiffer/ August 7, 2012/ Administrivia, Conference, Discussion

You have probably been to conferences, and might even have seen hackers in the wild attending events. When it comes to events where IT security is discussed, everyone needs a friendly atmosphere so you can trust the people you meet. The DeepSec conference aims to be a place where these criteria are met. We want you to be able to talk to anyone about anything. Judging from the feedback we got this goal was met. We’d like to introduce a statement published on our web site to emphasise our mission. It’s a policy to express our intention to provide a friendly and safe environment for everyone talking at and attending DeepSec events (the policy covers all DeepSec activities). Before any of you jump to conclusions, let me explain why we added the policy as

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“The early bird gets the worm” or “Can you be faster than FUD?”

Mika/ June 27, 2012/ Conference, Security Intelligence

This is an old saying and like most old sayings it bears some truth: the first one to notice an opportunity does indeed have an advantage. But I don’t want to philosophize about “ancient wisdom” or something the like but I want to address a quite up-to-date topic: 0-day prevention, early warning systems, heuristic detection and how fast you have to be to catch worms and 0-day exploits. A lot of security vendors and open source security projects provide a very fast response to emerging threats. New worms and malware are detected quickly after appearance in the wild and signature patterns are updated a couple of times daily. So you should be safe. Really? How much of your resources would you spend on 0-day prevention and how effective is it? We have learned from

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What to expect from DeepINTEL

Mika/ May 31, 2012/ Conference, Security Intelligence

Preliminary schedule soon (CFP is still open) DeepINTEL will be a conference about security intelligence on September 3rd and 4th 2012 in the heart of Europe. We have prepared this project for a long time and we were monitoring the security intelligence landscape for quite a while. During the last year we had many chances to discuss different approaches and talk to many people involved in security intelligence, either on the provider, research or customer side. Our vision is now clear and here are some details which might have been covered here and here or which might be new: Our understanding of security intelligence We know quite well that security intelligence isn’t defined very clearly. Methods and tools differ as wildly as expectations and goals do. We find almost as many approaches as we

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DeepSec Announces DeepSec 365 Conference Track

René Pfeiffer/ April 1, 2012/ Administrivia, Conference, High Entropy

IT security has grown into a cornerstone of our modern society. We rely on data integrity, availability, and we do not wish our personal or business data to be mirrored on pastebin.com or other web sites. 2011 has been full of high-profile security-related incidents. 2012 will most certainly continue in this fashion. This cannot go on forever. Therefore we decided to address the lack of IT security conferences and boost their number considerably. Starting with 1 January 2013 we start the DeepSec 365 Conference Track – 365 DeepSec security conferences in 2013, one every day! We are currently finalising the deal with our conference venue. Even the tourism industry has acknowledged that there really is nothing besides hosting IT security events. Forget skiing, spas, clubbing, museums, sightseeing and all that, you want to see

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DeepSec 2012 – Call for Papers

René Pfeiffer/ February 10, 2012/ Administrivia, Conference

The Finux Tech Weekly episode containing an interview with MiKa and me beats our announcement of the Call for Papers by 4 hours, but here’s the text. Enjoy! DeepSec 2012 “Sector 6” – Call for Papers We are looking for talks and trainings for the DeepSec In-Depth Security Conference 2012 (“Sector 6”). We invite researchers, developers, auditors and everyone else dealing with information security to submit their work. We offer slots for talks and workshops, and we encourage everyone working on projects to present their results and findings. Please visit our updated website for more details about the venue, the schedule and information about our past conferences: https://deepsec.net/ The DeepSec offers a mix of different topics and aspects like current threats and vulnerabilities, social engineering and psychological aspects as well as security management and

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DeepINTEL: Security Intelligence Event in Late Summer 2012

Mika/ January 20, 2012/ Conference, Internet, Security Intelligence

We are currently finalizing our new event in Summer 2012, focusing on Security Intelligence. Security Intelligence is one the newest disciplines in the IT security zoo and not yet fully defined (e.g. there is no Wikipedia article or rich bibliography of works dealing with the topic). We have been monitoring the Security Intelligence scene now for more than 3 years and found many different approaches, ranging from standard security advisories and alerts to deep insight into the current threat landscape. While some organizations (mostly network equipment vendors) seem to view Security Intelligence just as a new buzz-word for marketing others do a more thorough job: Especially software and anti-virus vendors like Microsoft, McAfee, IBM, Symantec and some ISPs like Verizon and AT&T provide valuable intelligence to the community. Also voluntary groups, free-of-charge spin-offs from

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Articles about DeepSec 2011

René Pfeiffer/ November 22, 2011/ Conference, Press

We have some more articles for you. Apparently the talks of our speakers raised a few eyebrows. Most of the articles are in German. Dradio: Das sichere Auto ist ein Mythos Interview with Mariann Unterluggauer about impressions from DeepSec 2011 and the myth of automobile security. Dradio: Nur scheinbare Datensicherheit This is a second article published on the Deutschlandfunk web site features Duncan’s talk and bugs in security software. Ö1: Können Hacker Autos fernsteuern? „Can hackers remotely control cars?“ Well, given the current design and lack of security they probably will do so in time for DeepSec 2012. Ö1: Make Cyberpeace, not Cyberwar. Ein Bericht von der DeepSec The topic of cyber warfare is still hot. Wie Terroristen verschlüsseln – Digitale Spuren kaum verwischt The Neuer Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) has a comment about Duncan’s

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Thanks for attending DeepSec 2011!

René Pfeiffer/ November 18, 2011/ Conference

The DeepSec 2011 has ended. We enjoyed meeting all of you and hope to have fulfilled our role as a catalyst. We had some great talks, great discussions, and shared thoughts, insights and different views concerning security and insecurity alike. We hope your professional paranoia doesn’t keep you from getting sleep. We will follow the press coverage in our blog and link to articles. Golem has produced video interviews which will be published soon. Our own video team will retreat to the rendering farm and post-process the raw video data. As soon as we have collected all slides from our speakers, we will put them to the archive (and publish the link). We thank all the speakers for the superb material they presented! Without talks there would be no DeepSec at all. We thank

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First Press Coverage of DeepSec 2011

René Pfeiffer/ November 18, 2011/ Conference, Press

The first articles about DeepSec 2011 are online. Most of them are in German, so you might want to use Google Translate for it. In addition Golem will publish video interviews with selected speakers soon (we will tell you as soon as they are available). Wie Terroristen verschlüsseln Duncan Campbell talks about encryption and compares it to the real world. There have been a lot of rumours about terrorist groups using modern encryption. The reality looks a bit different. Tools like PGP are around, but some groups still rely on substitution and transposition ciphers. Managing keys of modern cryptography and handling the tools isn’t as easy as changing clothes. Procedures, procedures, procedures, ask the auditors. Das Streben nach dem Cyber-Weltfrieden Stefan Schumacher illustrates the concept of cyber-peace described in his talk yesterday. Everyone invests

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Talk: Advances in IDS and Suricata

René Pfeiffer/ November 11, 2011/ Conference

Intrusion Detection Systems were very much in demand over 10 years ago. The widely known Snort IDS software is a prominent tool. Other vendors have their own implementations and you can readily buy or download thousands of rules distributed in various rule sets. Cranking up the sensitivity will then easily give you more alerts than you will ever be able process sensibly. This is the mindset that settles once they hear „IDS“ or „IPS“. We don’t think this view is still true. That’s why Victor Julien and Eric Leblond, Open Information Security Foundation, will talk about Advances in IDS and Suricata at DeepSec 2011. You have probably heard of Suricata, the next generation intrusion detection engine. Development of Suricata started in 2008 and war first released as stable in December 2009. Past DeepSec conferences featured

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Talk: On Cyber-Peace – Towards an International Cyber Defense Strategy

René Pfeiffer/ November 4, 2011/ Conference

While UK is preparing for war we’ll try something completely different at DeepSec 2011. We will talk about peace („cyber-peace“ to be exact). The ill-defined term cyber-war is haunting media, security communities, politics and the military for a while now. We already had talks about this at past DeepSec conferences. Cybersecurity is currently a big hype even in mainstream media like the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Guardian or The New Yorker. Exploits and Vulnerabilities like Stuxnet or the German Trojan Rootkit for Lawful Interception are discussed in prime time news. Hackers like the Chaos Computer Club offer technical advice to the German Parliament and the highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court. Due to the constant work of security experts, researchers and hackers (including some really cool media fnords and stints), the level of security

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Talk: Laws, Compliance and real Life

René Pfeiffer/ November 3, 2011/ Conference

If you believe that computer security is all about having the right tools and an expert staff, then you are mistaken. Never forget why you have computers in the first place – because of your business. Mikhail Utin will shed light on the corporate side of security by talking about  laws, compliance and real life (full title of his talk is US experience – laws, compliance and real life – when everything seems right but does not work). While information security can be improved in a number of ways, one powerful approach is continually overlooked by security researchers. This approach constitutes a collective effort by masses of computer users, where each individual has a very limited understanding of information security and is frequently forced to improve security by various laws and regulations. Pressure coming from

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Talk: Defeating BlackBerry Malware & Forensic Analysis

René Pfeiffer/ November 2, 2011/ Conference

Mobile phones have caught up on the malware side. Your phone can most probably now be infected by malicious software and be part of a botnet in the worst case. How do you analyse compromised devices? Do you have the right tools at hand? Maybe you don’t need any tools for you won’t find anything. Sheran A. Gunasekera explains in his talk Defeating BlackBerry Malware & Forensic Analysis at DeepSec 2011 how the forensic analysis of malware can be defeated. In the recent years, more prominence has been given to BlackBerry malware either in the wild or to commercially available kinds. Traditionally, using signature based malware scanners have been the way to detect and remove these malicious programs. Most smartphones can be fitted with anti-virus/-malware scanners these days. However Sheran will look at a different

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Talk: Bond Tech – I Want More Than Movie Props

René Pfeiffer/ October 30, 2011/ Conference

I watched „Bolt“ with my daughter yesterday. She’s still young and needed some time to distinguish fiction from reality, just like Bolt himself. If you regularly use (security) tools, then you might get a bit jealous about all these super-science skills and gadgets. This is especially true when it comes to the toys of James Bond. These questions arise: Does your software think it has super-powers, and when do we get these cineastic power tools on steroids just like in the films? Kizz MyAnthia of Halock Security Labs will address both questions in his talk at DeepSec 2011. There’s no doubt about it, you want these super-tools. We all do. So when do we get them? Well, soon or maybe never, but if you deal with information security (or vice versa) you have to

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