[ISN] Black Hat, DefCon and B-Sides survival guide, 2012

http://blogs.csoonline.com/security-leadership/2252/black-hat-defcon-and-b-sides-survival-guide-2012

By Bill Brenner
Salted Hash
CSO.com
July 10, 2012

In two weeks a lot of us will head to Las Vegas for Black Hat, DefCon or 
BSidesLV.  Having been to many Black Hat and B-Sides events, along with 
countless other events in the last eight years, I've learned plenty 
about how to get the most from the experience. And so, for the 
first-time attendee, I offer the following survival tips:


Don't let the noise get to you

Black Hat in particular is a noisy event. The vendors, in an effort to 
really fit in with the attitude of the conference, come up with all 
kinds of theatrics. One year, a guy was dressed up as a "Mad Russian" 
hacker mastermind. His attire was a cross between Captain Caveman, 
Charles Manson and Rasputin. I don't remember the vendor he worked for. 
I also remember that between sessions, it's hard to move around as 
people mingle in the middle of crowds rushing from one talk to the next.

The talks themselves are often surrounded by drama, though that part has 
calmed down in the last couple of years. Sometimes a vendor will try to 
stop a talk about exploits for a vulnerability in their products. 
Lawyers are brought in and a mess ensues. This happened in 2005, when 
Cisco moved to squash a talk by then-ISS researcher Michael Lynn on an 
exploitable issue with Cisco's IOS router operating system. The move 
proved to be a waste of time for Cisco, since the story got out anyway. 
But what was worse, in my opinion, was that a lot of good talks went 
unreported in the media because everyone was too busy chasing the hype 
over this one talk.

My advice here is to remember what you do in your day-to-day job, find 
the talks that most closely address the challenges you want to overcome 
and don't let drama and noise divert you from the plan.

[...]


--
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