0811, 2022

DeepSec 2022 Keynote: Complexity killed the Cat

René Pfeiffer/ November 8, 2022/ Conference

Complex systems is not a term indicating that you have stopped to understand something. The colloquial phrase „it’s complicated“ is often used as a joke. Complex systems have their own science. Information technology has managed to make our daily life easier. Applications manage vast amount of data, communication protocols transport countless numbers of messages, systems just work, and everything is fine. The problem is that code usually grows and never shrinks. This has implication for software development and for information security. The keynote will take you on a tour through complex systems, complexity, the limits of growth, and how the consequences can be managed in a sane way. The presentation will also try to remind you to ask questions, think twice about selecting appropriate metrics, and how to apply this approach to the tools

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1311, 2020

DeepSec Keynote: DevSecBioLawOps and the current State of Information Security

René Pfeiffer/ November 13, 2020/ Conference

Technology is evolving. This is especially true for computer science and the related information technology branch. When everything is outdated after a couple of months, the wind of change turns into a storm. It also affects the way we work, processes which enable us to get work done, and changes perspectives how we see the world, code, and its applications. Dev, DevOps, and DevSecOps is a good example how these changes look like at the top of the iceberg. Subjectively information security is always a few steps behind the bleeding edge. The word „bleeding“ is a good indication of why this is the case. However, security professionals cannot turn back time and ignore the way the world works. New technology will always get pushed into all areas of our lives until its creators realise

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2711, 2019

DeepSec 2019 Keynote: Computer Security is simple, the World is not – Raphaël Vinot and Quinn Norton

Sanna/ November 27, 2019/ Conference

Information security is too often seen as a highly technical field in computer science, and one where the more technical someone is, the more right they are likely to be. But security is part of systems of life, that not only include computers and phones, but systems of living, cultures, history, politics, and interpersonal relationships. Technical knowledge is important in those systems, but on its own, it accomplishes very little — as the sorry state of the computer security in the world demonstrates. Knowing how computers work doesn’t gives us an empirical knowledge of what people do with their devices, what their job is, what context they live in, what their adversaries want from them, what their capabilities or resources are. In this talk we will explain why listening is the most important part

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0811, 2016

DeepSec 2016 Keynote: Security in my Rear-View Mirror – Marcus J. Ranum

Sanna/ November 8, 2016/ Conference, Discussion, Security, Stories

Everything that’s old is new again, and if you work in security long enough, you’ll see the same ideas re-invented and marketed as the new new thing. Or, you see solutions in search of a problem, dusted off and re-marketed in a new niche. At this year’s DeepSec conference the keynote will be given by Marcus Ranum, who set up the first email server for whitehouse.gov. He will reflect upon over 30 years of IT security and make a few wild guesses for where this all may wind up. Spoiler alert: Security will not be a “solved” problem. Marcus answered a few questions beforehand: Please tell us the Top 5 facts about your talk. I’ll be talking about how the security market evolves from here. I’ll be talking about the relationship between security and management It’s going to be depressing. I have

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2001, 2016

Here be Dragons – SIGINT won’t go away in 2016 (or later)

René Pfeiffer/ January 20, 2016/ Conference

The new year is a couple of weeks old. Not much has changed from the perspective of information security. The word „cyber“ is still alive and kicking (just as the „cloud“ is, despite Safe Harbour not being safe any more). Crypto is being used as a scapegoat for major intelligence failures – again and again. Blaming mathematics is really easy, because few understand how cryptography protects the infrastructures all around us. Big Data and collecting intel is still going strong. In fact Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is now part of our society; some say it’s even a part of our culture. Want to know what SIGINT in big scale looks like? Well, Duncan Campbell explained the SIGINT monster in depth at the DeepSec conference in 2015. Have a look at the video recording. 2016 promises

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2012, 2013

DeepSec 2013 Keynote – “Cultural Learning Of China To Make Benefit Glorious Profession Of Infosec”

René Pfeiffer/ December 20, 2013/ Conference

Our video team gave us an early Christmas present, fresh from the rendering farm. The keynote of DeepSec 2013 by Wim Remes is already online. His keynote talk puts information security into a broader context. More often than not blaming China seems to be an easy way to “explain” digital attacks or to silence legitimate questions. Wim explores the cultural side and history in order to improve what we know about the context. Since the Internet is a global network information security experts need to broaden their horizon. For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. Attacks, persistent or not, can become complex, and dealing with the attribution problem is definitely no easy task. We heard about it at past DeepSec conferences. So enjoy Wim’s talk, have some

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1910, 2012

DeepSec 2012 Keynote: We Came In Peace – They Don’t: Hackers vs. CyberWar

René Pfeiffer/ October 19, 2012/ Conference

„Cyberwar“ is all the fashion these days. Everyone knows about it, everyone has capabilities, everyone has a military doctrine to deal with it. Sceptics make fun of it, politicians use it for election campaigns, security researchers wonder what’s new about it, „experts“ use it to beef up their CV, cybercrime yawns, journalists invent new words, most others are confused or don’t care (probably both). This is why DeepSec 2012 features four talks about this topic, including the keynote by Felix ‘FX’ Lindner. FX explains what you can expect from his presentation: “The issues we are facing concerning the militarization and beginning arms race in the so-called “cyber domain” are not what you might think they are. I would like to highlight two aspects of how we, the civilian hackers, in my opinion handle things

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