Black Hat Asia 2015

I have always wanted to attend a Black Hat conference ever since i heard about it 10 years ago, the time when i was interested in security and hacking. However, due to the steep price in the tickets to attend, i've never been able to afford myself a ticket. Imagine a 2 days conference cost between $1800 to $2000. 

So when I was told that Codenomicon is going to have a booth in Black Hat Asia and i will be involved in it...i was ecstatic and happy! I never would have imagined myself being in one of the most talked conferences in the world especially knowing Black Hat's presence in Asia, USA and Europe. 

So we came on the day before the conference to set up the booth and in the back of my head i just couldnt wait for the real thing to happen - the event itself. 

Our booth was situated in the Business Hall room and there were other companies including Tripwire, Cisco, Qualys, Tenable, Vectra and Logrhythm. There were also another business hall room which has another set of companies and organizations including ISC(2), OWASP and etc. 

While the event starts at 9am (keynote), the Business Hall is supposed to start at 10am. However, at 9.30am, people started coming in and visiting the booths. Lucky for me, i was there early to get things ready...plugged in my laptop and prep the demos for Codenomicon's products. 

I had the opportunity to attend the briefing as i was holding the briefing pass and listened to some talks. While the topics were interesting, the delivery of the topic was not as enthusiastic as i was expecting. And i was even surprised by the attendance as it wasn't a full house (unlike most conferences i attended in the past). The set up of the stage was great, similar like the one in DefCamp (Romania) where i spoke at last year. 

But despite certain level of expectations not being met, the best part of the event was the networking session, where i got to meet ex-colleagues, fellow hackers from India, friends from LinkedIn, security enthusiasts from all over the world. It was the best experience of the 2 days event.

Overall, i had fun. After speaking to some of my friends who have attended the event in Vegas and Europe, according to them, the ones there, are 10 to 20 times bigger than here. Wow! That was my expression! How big could it be there! And I am sure will make it a point to attend them one day! 

The Codenomicon Team