If you’ve ever been to t2, you know that the atmosphere and networking is everything. In order to keep it that way, we have to limit the amount of attendees, meaning there is a total of 99 seats available, including speakers and organizers.
That being said, we have passed the 90% mark. If you want to make sure you’ll actually have a seat, we advice you to register right now.
Having recently returned from the warmer parts of EMEA, where nights are warm and days even warmer, the importance of having friends and making new ones seems somehow topical. Global and regional geopolitics get a new meaning, when you can enjoy pleasant discussions with people having a local insight. The often-repeated-cliché of travel widening your horizons certainly holds true, but only if you get away from hotel and airport lounges to spend enough time in one place to really soak in the surroundings.
Historically, Helsinki has been the host city for all kinds of talks, and in many ways, t2 follows those traditions. We cater to an all-encompassing audience, where everybody is welcome regardless of a funny hat they might wear. One person’s ethical choice is another’s livelihood, and yesterday’s break-up/bankruptcy/allsafe is today’s comeback tour/hottest startup/evilcorp.
Just like a good foothold inside a Jenkins server gives you the keys to the kingdom, allocating an annual training budget for t2 is a good investment, if you prefer meeting fantastic people, exchanging intel^H^H^H^H^Hknowledge, and learning from world class research. This year there are also other interesting opportunities around t2 in Helsinki – a sauna day opening the doors of private homes for sauna visits and a whole event dedicated just to salty liquorice.
What more could you ask from an infosec conference?
ps. Don’t forget to include lobby bar expenses in your training cost estimates!
We just realised that we forgot to include the link for submitting the flags (it was not supposed to be part of the challenge 😉
Sorry!! Here we go!
t2’16 Challenge is on! Good luck!
As usual, you can follow the contestants via (near) real time scoreboard!
Everybody is a fan of disruption until it hits them personally.
Background
Unicorns attract competitors, copycats and charlatans. For a VC, the road to losing the principal is paved with poor decisions, bad luck and ultimately betting on the wrong horse. One of the challengers in the unregulated pay-per-hitchhike app industry, Astley Auto Association, has been trying to raise a C round. Its founder and CEO, a controversial character, is claimed to represent the darker side of the booming startup scene. While his fans cheer the sticking-it-to-the-man attitude R. Astley has demonstrated to the regulators, there are critics, including many notable venture capitalists and angel investors, who say the man embodies the lack of integrity and honesty.
With circumstances as messy as those of a publicly funded open source project, it gets even messier. An unknown actor has compromised the e-mail server of Astley Auto Association. To prove they have the whole archive, chosen mails from CEO of AAA, R. Astley, and other employees were collected to a dump.
A disgruntled employee, competitor, VC trying to bring down the valuation, angry customer, or a random opportunist – clearly an attribution question so difficult it can only be solved by world leading threat intelligence companies.
Luckily we are more interested in a good hacklog and thorough compromise. A properly placed string tells sometimes defenders and investigators more than thousand words in a compliance report. The mission, should you choose to accept it, is to analyse the e-mail dump and uncover the clues left by the unknown actor, which demonstrate the devastating level of control they have over the environment.
Details
The first person to recover all flags will win a free ticket to t2’16 conference. In addition to this, the creators of the Challenge will select another winner among the next ten correct answers. The criteria for the other selection is the elegance of the answer. In short, you can win with both speed and style.
The Challenge will be released on 2016-09-10 10:00 EEST right here at t2.fi
Where did the last 365 days go? Time flies when you’re up all night cybering, and t2’16 is now just around the corner. The schedule for this year has been released, and we’ve reserved one slot for a wildcard – stay tuned for updates.
This week’s nation-state hackback / Counter Computer Network Exploitation / HUMINT op who-knows-what makes Peter Kosinar’s talk on Thursday more than relevant. We promise this is a total co-incidence! To prevent your C&C business intelligence server from getting compromised, coming early enough to check out the keynote is a good idea.
While t2-as-a-Service is not yet on our drawing board, opening up the registration together with the CFP seemed to be a popular move. Around 30% tickets were sold over the summer, and based on purchasing patterns of previous years, majority will be sold during the next 4-6 weeks. Last year was sold out a month before the conference – if you want to confirm your attendance, now is the time to do so.
As always, creating a conference schedule from CFP entries is not as easy as one might think. Balancing the content to cater to a varied audience means, unfortunately, leaving out quality submissions. The Advisory Board would like to thank each and everyone who submitted a talk this year – a conference is nothing without the speakers.
If you are tired of any of the following: 1) conferences where coffee service equals one coupon (= cup) per day, 2) conferences with crazy-ass lines making world’s busiest transit hubs seem like a pleasurable life experience, 3) conferences showcasing talks indistinguishable from sponsored content, or 4) conferences which overcharge and underdeliver, please continue reading.
t2 has throughout its history offered speakers and guests an intimate atmosphere where ideas can be exchanged with fellow hax0rz. We take pride in treating speakers as guests of honor – presenting a talk at t2 and visiting Helsinki is something we want you to both remember and enjoy.
Finland is a country, which has pioneered things such as the first web browser with a GUI[1], has no embassy in New Zealand and has introduced the world some minor tech stuff such as Linux and SMS. In case your bucket list contains BDSM with complete strangers, just submit a paper, come to Helsinki and ask for Finnish sauna [2].
While Helsinki cannot offer you sunshine, resorts or palm trees, we can compensate that with cold weather, eternal winter, darkness, and snow if you’re lucky. According to the latest OECD statistics[3], Finland has as many metal bands as France has wine producers, but more metal subgenres than there are wine regions.
t2’16 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 offensive offense, enterprise compromise, ambiguous APT-attribution, nation state lulz, anti-anti-anti-forensics, blacklisted research, crafting digital munitions, defense strategy and tactics that actually work, tampering anti-tamper units, competitive barbecue and/or doping in professional sports. Topics outside the listed categories are accepted as long as you promise to share love and happiness.
The advisory board will be reviewing submissions until 2016-07-01.
First come, first served. Submissions will not be returned.
Quick facts for speakers
Still not sure if this is for you? Check out the blast from the past:
https://t2.fi/schedules/
ps. If you are one of those dedicated hardcore t2 visitors and want to ensure your place in the audience even before speakers are announced.. The registration is now open!
How to submit
Fill out the form at https://t2.fi/action/cfp
References
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwise
[1] http://www.visitfinland.com/article/10-sauna-tips-for-beginners/
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=site:oecd-nea.org+filetype:php
[3] With the exception of Charlier Miller and Chris Valasek
[4] Yes, we know
Three and half weeks until t2’15. We’re sold out but we didn’t sell out. The hard limit of 99 attendees is the corner stone of the conference and come hell or high water, it’s here to stay.
It’s also the reason we think now is a good time to remind those who plan on attending t2’16 to sneak those figures into next year’s budget. After that, it’s just a case of “We had this discussion last October” and “Our training budget accounts for t2, lobby bar and/or random 0day”. Some of the more veteran attendees have taken this a step further and just labeled the cost as threat intel. After all, it’s the one budget category where you can pour in money and nobody questions the spending or the results.
Speaking of money, we’d like to see Lester Freamon’s take on attribution when it comes to those annoyingly pedestrian toolkits.