1205, 2017

DeepSec welcomes SEC Consult as Sponsor for 2017!

René Pfeiffer/ May 12, 2017/ Conference, Security

Testing products, production code, security measures, or the overall security of infrastructure is hard work. The typical needs in term of information technology for a company or an organisation has become a variety of components that need to be maintained and hardened against attacks. The devil is in the details. In order to find critical weaknesses you need decades of experience, a thorough understanding of the technologies in use, in-depth knowledge of processes that touch information technology, and a decent portion of creativity to come up with ways around obstacles. SEC Consult, our long-time sponsor, has all of this – and more. They publish their findings and offer consulting for anyone needing extra security. Take a look at the House of Keys project, the IoT Inspector, or gaping holes in digital forensics software that

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1105, 2017

DeepSec welcomes Digital Guardian as Sponsor for 2017

René Pfeiffer/ May 11, 2017/ Conference, Security

No event can be done with supporters, and so we welcome Digital Guardian as sponsor for the upcoming DeepSec 2017 conference! If you have data in your organisation, then you might be interested in talking to Digital Guardian’s experts, because they know a lot about what data does, where it lives, what endpoints really are, how you protect it, and how you keep exclusive access to it. Since data is code on most computing architectures, there’s a double benefit. Digital Guardian is a next generation data protection platform purpose built to stop data theft. The Digital Guardian platform performs across the corporate network, traditional endpoints, mobile devices and cloud applications to make it easier to see and stop all threats to sensitive data. For more than 10 years, it has enabled data-rich organizations to

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0911, 2016

Screening of “A Good American” in Vienna with Bill Binney

René Pfeiffer/ November 9, 2016/ Discussion, High Entropy, Security Intelligence

There will be a screening of the documentary A Good American in Vienna tomorrow. We highly recommend watching this film, even if you are not directly connected to information security. Threat intelligence has far-reaching consequences, and in the case of the world’s biggest intelligence agency it also affects you. A Good American will be shown at 1000, Village Cinema Wien Mitte, and at 1600, Audimax of the Technische Universität Wien (you need to send an email with a RSVP to attend). All of this takes place in the course of a lecture about the topic. Markus Huber and Martin Schmiedecker have kindly organised everything. Bill Binney will be present, too. So you can directly talk to him and ask him questions. We highly recommend not to miss this opportunity.

2709, 2016

CERT.at supports the DeepSec 2016 Conference

René Pfeiffer/ September 27, 2016/ Conference, Security

We welcome the Computer Emergency Response Team Austria as a support of DeepSec 2016! CERT.at is the primary contact point for IT-security in a national context. CERT.at will coordinate other CERTs operating in the area of critical infrastructure or communication infrastructure. When it comes to incident response, the coordination of any information regarding the event is crucial. CERT.at fulfils this role since 2008. In addition CERT.at is actively involved in security research. Minibis is a tool for automatically building an automated malware analysis station based on a concept introduced in the paper “Mass Malware Analysis: A Do-It-Yourself Kit”. Have a chat with them during the conference. They will host demonstrations and let you see their software tools in action. Of course, in case you ever have to handle incidents you should talk to them

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2009, 2016

Last Call for Early Bird Tickets – DeepSec 2016

René Pfeiffer/ September 20, 2016/ Administrivia, Conference

We are back from 44CON and thoroughly enjoyed our time in London. The keynotes were great. The presenters showed a lot of interesting thoughts and facts you can use for attack and defence. Furthermore the conversations with attendees and speakers were very fruitful. You really cannot plan what you will be talking about. This is why you should attend conferences. And this is why you should book your DeepSec tickets now! Early bird registration is still possible. Make the most out of it. Don’t wait until the last minute! If you are interested in attending workshops, book as soon as possible! Trainings have a minimum number of participants. You have been warned. Either way, we are looking forward to see you at DeepSec 2016!

2008, 2016

Preliminary Schedule of DeepSec 2016 – almost done

René Pfeiffer/ August 20, 2016/ Administrivia, Call for Papers, Conference, Schedule

We got over 100 submissions for DeepSec 2016! This is a new record. Consider that we have only room for about 40% of the content. While you may be impatient to hear about the trainings and the talks, please bear with us. We are in the final round of reviews and will have the preliminary schedule ready the day after tomorrow. You will be able to enjoy reading the announcement during your morning coffee break. Promised. To give you a little sneak preview, here are the main topics we will be addressing with the content: cryptography, Internet of Things (IoT), social engineering, threat hunting, the current state of affairs in information security, networking stuff (both wired and wireless), penetration testing, exploit automation, attacking web applications, iOS exploits, physical security, world domination a.k.a. „cyber“ threats,

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1206, 2016

DeepINTEL 2016 – Save the Date for Security Intelligence

René Pfeiffer/ June 12, 2016/ Administrivia, Security Intelligence

Analysing threat intelligence hasn’t been more important. We all know that bad things will happen. That’s not the issue to worry about. You should spend some thoughts on why something happens, what methods are involved, and what your adversaries look like on the inside. Defending your assets is much more than using a fence, some doors, and badges for your employees. We would like to welcome you to DeepINTEL to discuss security intelligence in-depth. The DeepINTEL 2016 has been moved. Save the new date; DeepINTEL will take place on 20/21 September. The location hasn’t changed, and good weather has been ordered. Make sure you order your tickets!

0406, 2016

BSides London 2016 – Schedule

René Pfeiffer/ June 4, 2016/ Conference, Security

In case you haven’t noticed, the London BSides schedule is up. The Rookie track starts right with the most important part of information security – opsec. Behaviour is on a par with expensive security hardware and your favourite protection software. Wearables, video games, hidden data, malware mythbusting, and more follow next. The main schedule features presentations about the impact of TOR/I2P traffic to your servers (think or best forget about CloudFlare), methods used by options advanced attackers, attacking Low Powered Wide Area Network (LPWAN) devices used for smart / IoT stuff, malicious software, static code analysis, threat analysis, the temptation of containers, and honey pots. There’s ample of content for everyone looking for new ideas. Don’t miss the opportunity!

1103, 2016

“A Good American” opens next Week in Austrian Theatres

René Pfeiffer/ March 11, 2016/ Administrivia, Discussion, High Entropy, Security, Security Intelligence

For everyone attending DeepSec 2015 we organised a private screening of the film “A Good American”. Everyone else now gets the chance to see this film in theatres beginning on 18 March 2016. Next week there will be the premiere in Vienna, Linz, and Innsbruck here in Austria. Bill Binney will be present himself, and he will answer questions from the audience. We highly recommend “A Good American” to everyone dealing with information security, regardless of the level. Full take and Big Data is not always the answer to your security challenges. Every gadget around is turning smart, and so should you. We hope to see you at the premiere here in Vienna next week!

2011, 2015

Thanks for attending DeepSec 2015!

René Pfeiffer/ November 20, 2015/ Conference, Misc

DeepSec 2015 is over. We had a fantastic time, great presentations, lots of conversations about the state of information security, and many other issues. You can do a lot more when you are not lost in a big crowd, not being able to connect to speakers, sponsors, and fellow IT security enthusiasts. A big thank you to all our speakers, attendees, trainers, supporters, staff, sponsors, partners, and the IT security community! See all of you in 2016!

2910, 2015

MJS Article: The Compromised Devices of the Carna Botnet by Parth Shukla

René Pfeiffer/ October 29, 2015/ Internet, Report, Security

Last year we talked about publishing the proceedings of past DeepSec conferences  with a collection of articles covering presentation held in Vienna. We like to introduce Parth Shukla, who presented a report of the devices compromised by the Carna Botnet. This article will showcase the latest analysis and the progress of industry collaboration on the problem of Internet facing devices that have default credential logins through telnet. The Carna Botnet, which was used to perform the first-ever map of the Internet – Internet Census 2012 – highlighted a major information security concern with devices that allow default credential login from the Internet by default. For more information on the Internet Census 2012, please refer to the anonymous researcher’s paper. A complete list of compromised devices that formed part of the Carna Botnet was obtained

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2810, 2015

Special Screening of the Documentary “A Good American” during DeepSec 2015

René Pfeiffer/ October 28, 2015/ Conference, Discussion, High Entropy, Security Intelligence

Attendees of DeepSec 2015 will receive a special treat. We have been talking to Friedrich Moser, and he has agreed to show his documentary „A Good American“ on 20 November 2015 exclusively. The private screening will take place in Vienna. It starts at 2100 at the Burg Kino, known for showing „The Third Man“. „A Good American“ explains how to do threat intelligence in a more efficient way, according to the creator of ThinThread: „A codebreaker genius, a revolutionary surveillance program and corruption across the board of NSA. Against this backdrop unfolds the feature documentary A GOOD AMERICAN. The film tells the story of Bill Binney and his program ThinThread and how this perfect alternative to mass surveillance got ditched by NSA for money.“ After the film Friedrich Moser, Duncan Campbell, James Bamford, and

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2010, 2015

Thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring DeepSec 2015!

René Pfeiffer/ October 20, 2015/ Conference

When it comes to information security, Microsoft has a lot of stories to tell. The Windows® platform is widely deployed and used all over the world. A lot of exploits exist for this system. Being well-known has it disadvantages. For all of you who have followed the Way of Disclosure, you will certainly remember that there were a lot of discussions on Bugtraq and other forums about vulnerabilities and how to publish them. Those were the days of RFPolicy by Rain Forest Puppy (and before). Microsoft sponsors the DeepSec conference since the first day. Members of the Microsoft Security Team have attended our conference regularly. So if you like to get in touch, drop by and talk to them. As they put it during DeepSec 2007, they have learned to listen. Take advantage of

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1310, 2015

Defence – Beating the Odds with Knowledge

René Pfeiffer/ October 13, 2015/ Conference, Discussion, Mission Statement, Training

When did you write your last business letter? You probably don’t recall, because you write one all of the time. When did you last use ink and paper to do this? If you can’t remember the answer to this question, don’t bother trying. Digital communication is part of our daily life, not only in the business world. We are very accustomed to communicate in the here and now, up to the point where being offline feels unnatural. In turn this means that we are constantly exposed to networks of all kinds, especially the Internet. Our door is open all around the clock. We can’t close it any more, thus openly inviting every kind of threat also using networks. It’s time to seriously think about this. What does it mean? What do we need to

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0809, 2015

Social Engineering: Cold Call Warning (EHS, EHM)

René Pfeiffer/ September 8, 2015/ Administrivia, Odd

While we have a workshop on social engineering for you at DeepSec 2015, we do not do any trainings or exercises before the DeepSec event starts. A speaker alerted us that he got a cold call from a company offering cheap rates for accommodation. In case you have received any call from Exhibition Housing Management (EHM) and Exhibitors Housing Services (EHS), you can safely hang up. Both organisations have been used for scams in the past. Apparently they are alive and kicking. We thank EHS/EHM for providing exercise material and contact data for use during the conference.