t2’17 schedule online
The schedule for t2’17 is now available for your viewing pleasure.
There are two open speaking slots, and trust us, we are working on those. History has thought us to leave options on the table, and that’s exactly what we are doing. While focus of t2 is heavily on the networking and human interaction, we take curating conference program very seriously – a good mix of thought-provoking and hardcore tech presentations gives a fitting backdrop for the lobby bar chats.
It’s a little over two months until t2’17 and over 50% tickets have been sold already. Coincidentally, that’s also about 50% increase from last year. Opening up the ticket sales early has proved to be popular, and you can expect us to continue doing so in the future.
To ensure a seat in the audience, we recommend registering your attendance sooner than later. For those interested in a free admission, the challenge is still open!
Morgan Marquis-Boire keynote 2015
Edit: While the content has aged little, our keynote speaker choice failed on a catastrophic level. We are leaving this post and video up in the name of transparency.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
— George Santayana, The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress – Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense. 1905
In this 2015 keynote headhntr aka Morgan Marquis-Boire philosophizes on nation state attacks, their history, how hackers operate, and the nature of the Internet. As with all philosophical content and/or keynotes, very little has fundamentally changed since the talk.
Is modern technology the Panopticon? What is the East Germany tipping point of today? Do you agree with Morgan at all? Watch the keynote and let us know on the Twitter with #t2infosec !
Trigger warning: Some slides TS/SI
t2’17 Challenge – a break from tradition
This year’s pre-conference challenge will be a t2 exclusive bug bounty. For more information on how to participate, please see the t2’17 Challenge page.
As we’ve been organizing challenges for over a decade, you might wonder why change now? For several years in a row, the challenge participant numbers have been steadily declining, despite increased efforts put into creating the technical puzzles, challenge descriptions and back stories, and actual promotion. It’s not just the number of submissions, but also the downloads and page views. Thomas Malmberg kindly pointed out that with conference challenges we’re competing for people’s time – this is the arena where also bug bounties play.
It was time for us to either adapt or perish. This being t2, failure was not an option and quitting is something you do for apps, not in real life. With conference budgets one simply does not organize a bug bounty – you need friends’ help for that. That is the reason we partnered up with LocalTapiola to provide you a t2 exclusive bug bounty, targeting a real world business application running in production environment. To make sure the spirit of t2 challenges is still there, we are emphasizing the vulnerability quality and proof of exploitability. The challenge is not a speed competition – the most elegant and meaningful vulnerability submission will receive the free ticket, and we have adjusted the whole bug bounty process to reflect that.
Once you convert someone else’s medium severity local file read into unauthenticated remote code execution, you start to value proper analysis and investigation into the technical details of a vulnerability. In other words, 2002 called – they want their apache-scalp.c back. The 15 year anniversary is a pure co-incidence, as is Dave Aitel’s headline keynote at t2’17, the stars just happened to align the right way, like good exploitation primitives after putting in the time and effort.
The challenge is dead. Long live the challenge.
We hope you enjoy the reinvigorated format!
Dave Aitel keynote
Those who actually read the CFP announcement might have noticed the fine print in the footnote section where we announced this year’s keynote. Like having an IRC gateway from a BBS group chat, we’re trying to stay modern and understand that since time is money and everybody wants a TL;DR which fits a tweet, we need to provide one:
Breaking: Dave Aitel giving the headline keynote at t2’17! #t2infosec #cyber #leftoflaunch #dailydave #voiceofreason #buffythevampireslayer
In other words, we’re continuing the tradition of inviting former @stake / NSA employees / DailyDave posters to speak at t2. If you’ve been reading mailing lists and not just clicking on random links from Twitter, you will probably agree that people who have been long enough in the game often have the kind of insight you can only get by having been there and done that. It is our pleasure to welcome Dave Aitel to deliver the keynote this year.
In case you were born after Miami Vice originally aired, do some googling and figure out a way to mention GOBBLES and our keynote speaker in the same sentence.
Call for papers 2017
Do you have a fear of being naked[0] in front of other people? Can you name a president[1] who has climbed a palm tree during an official state visit? Do you prefer small and efficient airports? Would you like to present world class research to a highly technical audience? If not sure yet, please continue reading.
t2 infosec is warmly welcoming you to Helsinki, on October 26-27 2017 – CFP is now open, and by submitting a talk, you get a chance to answer one or more of the previous questions.
Finland, the country in the heart of darkness, has managed to survive neutral and independent throughout its history despite facing pressure from the global superpowers due to her geopolitically strategic location. Dominance over the Baltic sea depends on controlling a handful of islands, Åland islands being one of the areas of importance. In a very typical Finnish fashion, we have embraced the 160 years of Åland islands demilitarization by drinking at home, alone, in our underwear[2]. Even Vogue[3] approves that.
While many people here would like to officially see us as the gateway between the East and the West – either through our land border with Russia or the fastest flights between Europe and Asia [4], the biggest advantage comes from the side alleys of the Internet. On the imageboards, the last sanctions for true freedom of speech, Finnish tactical meme capabilities hold a special stature – loved, admired, feared and hated, sometimes all of those at the same time. Classics like Spurdo spärde are shitposted with an intensity only a country with a long history in developing Linux, Internet protocols and mobile phones can provide, while new organic highly viral OC is pushed out at a rate comparable to major information warfare centers.
In addition to meeting the nation, which produces above average amounts of hackers, memelords and F1 drivers per capita, Helsinki in October offers you a mix of modern architecture and the Classics, saunas, casual foreign intelligence activities [5], early days of Northern European winter and cold weather, and chance to visit neighboring countries by just hopping onto a ferry at one of the harbors.
We organize this conference out of love and do our best to make it a memorable experience to both speakers and audience alike. If you’re in doubt, just send questions with #t2infosec hashtag on Twitter for an (un)biased opinion. This is an event from hackers to hackers.
t2’17 offers you an audience with a taste for technical security presentations containing original content. This is your chance to showcase the latest research and lessons in strategic offensive capabilities, practical applications for 48 Laws of Power, snakeoil-less security certifications, scientifically proven remote sensing, dropping zero days during presentations, scaling defense or buildings, detection mechanisms and tactics, preventing diamond heists, putting the ASL into ASLR, new vulnerability classes or something completely different containing love, happiness and traces of technical security.
The advisory board will be reviewing submissions until 2017-08-09.
First come, first served. Submissions will not be returned.
Quick facts for speakers
- presentation length 60-120 minutes, in English
- complimentary travel and accommodation for one person [6]
- decent speaker hospitality benefits
- no marketing or product propaganda
Still not sure if this is for you? Check out the blast from the past.
Considering many of our visitors know what they want and trust us to deliver, we’re making their life easy.. The registration is now open!
How to submit
Fill out the form at https://t2.fi/action/cfp
References
[0] No worries, we have saunas to cater to both nude or non-nude guests.
[1] Urho Kekkonen https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Kekkonen-Tunis-1965.jpg
[2] https://toolbox.finland.fi/images/finland-emojis/kalsarikannit/
[3] http://www.vogue.com/article/finnish-trend-kalsarikannit-vogue-archive
[4] http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/17/finnair-launches-singapore-to-helsinki-route-claiming-fastest-way-to-get-to-europe.html
[5] http://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnish_intelligence_warns_foreign_powers_targeting_young_politicians/9540600
[6] Except literally @nudehaberdasher and @0xcharlie
[42] Ladies, gentlemen, and hackers, this year our headlining keynote speaker is the voice of reason when it comes to cyber policies, offense and Buffy the Vampire slayer, the person who needs no introductions, Dave Aitel!
Sweet Tools O’ Mine
How does one go about creating new tools and toolchains?
In “Sweet Tools O’ Mine” from t2’16 Hugo Teso shares his approach for creating an offensive toolkit, which contains both hardware and software parts. Learning by doing, when to leverage the power of existing solutions, and when to create your own are all discussed throughout the video.
If you are serious about offense, this is a presentation for you.
Iaitō, a GUI for radare2 reverse engineering framework is available on GitHub.
Forging the USB Armory
We’re continuing with the theme of securing international travel by releasing Andrea Barisani‘s Forging the USB Armory talk from t2’15.
Those enjoying international travel and/or operational situations, the dual-use capabilities of the platform might be something of interest. From safe USB charger, encrypted file storage and automated self-destruct, password manager, TOR access point to portable offensive toolkit, the opportunities are endless. Even if open source hardware design is outside your comfort zone, the video gives you a good glimpse into solving hard problems and the capabilities of USB Armory.
Again, as with all our curated releases, this is a must see – enjoy!
The code is available on GitHub, slides here and INTERLOCK code here.
Building a Reasonably Safe Travel Burner Laptop
International travel can be difficult, and for a security conscious person especially so.
In this video from t2’15 Georg Wicherski demonstrates a way of solving many problems related to carrying a personal computing device with you. For a person crossing borders on a regular basis or otherwise in need of heightened security for their laptop, this is a must see. Enjoy!
Do note that this has been actually implemented in practice instead of being just intellectual mastu^H^H^H a mental exercise. For more details about the setup, refer to the GitHub repository. The setup has been since updated to support TPM remote attestation.
If Attackers Can Use Graphs, Then Why Can’t We?
Those in the business of securing enterprises and organizations should definitely watch OlleB‘s presentation from t2’15. Moving from point-in-time <insert-product-name-here> scans to a more structured approach using graphs, attack models, understanding and eradicating vulnerability classes or using safety/assurance cases is a long-term security investment.
Taking your defensive game to the next level requires trying out new approaches to old problems and sometimes challenging the conventional wisdom. This video should give you food for thought – it’s one of our favorites!