Speaking at DefCamp Security Conference

Four days after my talk in Austria, i will be flying to Bucharest, Romania to speak at DefCamp. Like Austria, this will also be my first time in Romania or eastern Europe for that matter. I am so psyched and excited for this as well. After getting on the 57th spot out of a total of 800 over teams that compete in the online D-CTF challenge, i am looking forward to see the top 10 teams challenging themselves at the conference. The conference will be held in Bucharest from the 27th Nov to 30th Nov 2014.

Link: http://defcamp.ro

The DefCamp Banner

 

Some of the speakers

The Schedule of the talks for Day 1

Speaking at BSidesVienna Security Conference

I am privileged to be accepted as a speaker for BSides Vienna, Austria. This will be my first time in Austria and i am very excited for it and meet security enthusiasts in the region. The conference will be held on the 22 November 2014.

Link: http://bsidesvienna.at/

 BSidesVienna Banner

The Schedule of my Talk

BSidesLV - An Awesome Security Conference!

BSidesLV is a security conference in the US, more specifically in Las Vegas! Yeap, that's right.. Sin City! I was excited and privileged to be accepted as a speaker at the conference. As it was my first time speaking in America, it was quite a challenge for me as i know that unlike audience in Asia, American audience seems to be more outspoken and when i was there it was indeed true.

After i arrived at the Tuscany Suites and Casino, my stomach started to hurt. That's right, the pressure, the stress...there's so many butterflies rampaging in my stomach as i walked to the reception. The queue to register was long. Initially i joined in the queue but then i saw some individuals 'bypassing' them. I assumed they must have been the speakers so i asked the volunteers and phew... i managed to get in without queuing.

Once i got in, i didn't waste any time and start to take as much pictures as i can. Well, i was a tourist when i was there so excuse my itchy fingers to snap pictures. The atmosphere was awesome, the people were friendly and the topics were great! Despite not properly socializing with the crowd, i was having a great time there. Well, i am a sucker for conferences, so such a con made me feel belonged.

When my time was up, i walked up to the 'stage' and connect my computer to the VGA cable to extend my monitor. I spent the first 4 minutes trying to get it connected. Resolution sadly gave me an issue so i had to make do with a slightly smaller yet still visible resolution on the projector. I was nervous and things that i was prepared to say, those words just got lost. But i was happy that the audience, despite my pressured state, were very supportive. Some were smiling, some were nodding their heads, showing signs of approval with every slides i went through. Of course, i was challenged by another speaker who told me off about the practicality of my talk after i shown two clips from Die Hard 4.0. After replying to him saying that, it is possible for a scene like Die Hard 4.0 to happen and telling him that my last few slides will show it how, he with his 3 other friends, all wearing black tshirts, stood up and walked out of the conference room..and i was just on my slide 4. I was a little demotivated but i am glad that the rest stayed until the end. What i didnt expect was the audience gave me a round of applause after my talk! I was very touched and felt a little emotional, feeling appreciated despite my stressed mode and pressure.

After the talk, i was approached by a handful of people from the audience, asking me more about my talk. Some asked about my talk and some congratulated me about my performance. I was very happy to hear from their own words that they enjoyed my presentation. And what's more important was that i got to meet some experts in the field i was talking about.

All in all, it was an amazing experience, this was indeed one of the best conferences i attended. The organizers, the volunteers, the speakers and the audience were simply awesome! It truly felt like home...

Here are some of the pictures...

Where it all happened!

The souvenirs!

 Bought and Free Tshirts!

Close up of the Badge!

Some sponsor banners!

Mini booths

WiFi Pineapple!! I bought one!

Protiviti! - Looking for Security Enthusiasts to join them.

Big Ass O-Wasp!

Hackers For Charity booth!

CTF Competition! 

Social Engineering Competition!

Creative Winning Trophy!

 The Topics!

 The start of my presentation 

 Me with Chris Sistrunk aka SCADA God!

Me and Jack Daniels, the co-founder of Security BSides conference!

This volunteer (on the left in yellow) was the man who motivated me and encouraged me not to be pressured and even helped me answered a question from the audience! Kudos to him! Wished i knew who he is..

Support our Troops! I mean..Sponsors... :)

ABS-FITA Cyber Security Seminar - Presentation

ABS-FITA : Cyber Security Seminar - An Experience

It was such a great honor to be invited to demonstrate our capabilities to the masses at the seminar. Believe it or not, although the demo was only 1 hour, it took me over 100 hours just to prepare the setup, ensuring my payloads work and the Anti Virus applications can be bypassed. The preparation was not as smooth as i hoped it would be.

The first time i prepped it and then showed it to a colleague, all failed! My Backtrack Linux wasn't working, the Xenotix unexpectedly hanged and it was such a mess. Then after hours and hours of reinventing the wheel, feeling confident and showed it to the internal staffs, again, it failed! Why? Why? Why?

Then came the day the organizers from the ABS-FITA to see the demo in the office. I prayed and i prayed and i prayed, please dont fail.. and thank God! It went smooth!


The 'Rehearsal'

The organizers told us to come as early as 7am to prep the stage and ensure the projectors and sound are all working. Well, to ensure that i would not be late by our 'reliable' MRT, i had to wake up as early as 4 am and leave the house at 5.15am reaching the Ritz Carlton hotel at 5.40am! There was no one around in the hall but without wasting time, i set up my machines and do a trial run on the whole demo process. Smooth...

During the Talk

While the event already started, instead of listening to the speaker, i was at the speaker's table with my two notebooks on, rerunning my demo process. Smooth....

During Lunch

Our presentation was scheduled at 4pm. In other words, we had 4 more hours before our turn. Everyone went to lunch but i was busy on stage testing my network (4G) connection and ensuring that i am able to send traffic within the tethered network environment.... Smooth...

Showtime

So when our turn begins, i was very nervous or in Hokkien (Gan Cheong), because i really really hope it will work. The problem was, its easier and more environment friendly doing the demo in front of an audience of hackers as they would understand if and when a Demo fails. But presenting it to an audience of business level, i need to ensure that everything must be perfect end to end... And here's the thing, it was all perfect until the part when i tried to connect into the database server's shell but connection was reset. I was like, Oh No! but my colleague who did all the talking coolly said "Looks like the connection was out, but he will try again. Not every hack is a perfect hack". And when i enter 'Exploit' and hit the Enter button.. loading...loading...loading and YES it went through!!! Total 'downtime' was 10 seconds! Phew!!!

Conclusion

I was glad to be able to show everything completely and as feedback-ed by the organizers "it was the highlight of the event". Some of the people came up to us and said they enjoyed the demo. Some said it opened their eyes after seeing it live. And finally, unexpectedly, i received a speaker's gift by the organizer... a Mont Blanc wallet! How nice!!

Next Week: Presentation @ Websense! 
Link: http://app.certain.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKWebId=0x5770881342&varPage=info
Link to pictures: http://centres.smu.edu.sg/fita/events/photos-videos/cyber-security-seminar/