Micah Parks started his professional career about six years ago in the National Security Agency. After moving to the private sector, Micah has continued to work as a security minded software engineer. He has created and maintains multiple open source projects, with the most popular one involving JSON Web Key Sets, used by thousands of other projects including those from Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Nintendo, ByteDance, and various governments and telecom providers. He also runs a small, niche, SaaS platform and always has a side project or two going.

Reverse Engineering for Dummies: The “what if?” user (<– add to your schedule)

When developing a product, software engineers often discuss the “what if?” user. What if a user builds their own frontend client? What if a user finds that embedded API key? What if a user notices that endpoint doesn’t have authorization? This talk has three real-life examples from the speaker’s perspective as the “what if?” user. Each example will delve into the motivation, the security flaws reverse engineered, and how to improve the security of each product. This talk will cover reverse engineering assets from an Android game, a waitlist to buy exercise equipment, and a Publish Subscribe system for an auction house. This talk aims to generate interest in identifying software design flaws and reverse engineering them, as well as helping teach about common security issues and practical methods of fixing them.

Come see Micah Parks at RVAsec 13!

Ever since he blew a capacitor installing a Cd drive and causing a small fire in his first self-built computer, Corey has been obsessed with computer systems and how they work. After 13 years in the Infosec industry wearing just about every hat, from being in a SOC to hunting threats in a CIRT to Security Engineering for customers, He is happily in a security engineering role protecting Virginians saving for the most important things to them, while wearing a cool t-shirt every day as per his manager’s request. Mastadon: @vgzbrennan@infosec.exchange

Embracing my inner cyber wizard to defeat Impostor Syndrome (<– add to your schedule)

Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon that makes you feel like a fraud, despite your achievements and qualifications. It can affect your confidence, performance, and well-being. In this talk, We will discuss Impostor Syndrome and I will share my Infosec journey and how I’ve worked on minimizing the effects of Impostor Syndrome over the course of my career. I will go into detail about the concept of the Hacker Grimoire and how it and a focus on documentation in general helped me to challenge my Impostor Syndrome. Additionally, We’ll take a peek into my Hacker Grimoire and also give you tips on how to get started with your own.

Come see Corey Brennan at RVAsec 13!

Chris currently works for Palo Alto Networks in R&D, helping customers stay ahead of threat actors and helping our products stay customer focused. His experience with UEBA and IAM helped drive the ITDR module to not only focus on Identity based attacks, but also the entire Identity lifecycle helping to improve outcomes for customers and detections for Insider Threat programs across the globe. He loves talking to customers about SIEM, Security Operations, and the analyst experience which allows him to learn and adjust accordingly. Never an expert, always a student.

The Human Experience of Security Operations (<– add to your schedule)

Security Operations has become the talk of the town now that there are CoPilots, Unified Consoles, and VC money pouring into the field. While many of those things address technical aspects what about the business of security operations? Specifically the people involved. Chris Tillett has spent 2 years interviewing SOC leaders and analysts and would like to share his results from this data driven approach.

Come see Chris Tillett at RVAsec 13!

Mr. McOmie started in offensive security in 1994 and is a trusted advisor, security leader and mentor. With a career focus in offensive security and a strong technical background, he is recognized for his excellence in developing and executing enterprise security strategies and leading technical and tactical programs. He has founded and contributed to several industry leading organizations over his career including start ups, fortune 100 enterprises, and federal agencies. As an extrovert, he passionately supports the information security community, is a featured speaker at various conferences, a published author, and an industry liaison for many businesses and organizations.

Specialties: Security Leadership & Program Development, Security Service Practice & Team Direction, Red Teaming, Ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing, Social Engineering, Physical Security, Assessments, Incident Response, Compliance. By leveraging these talents and his experience, Mr. McOmie guides companies and executive leaders to understand the importance of, communicating the need for, and addressing the challenges that it takes to create and maintain a strong security posture. X (Twitter): @lmcomie

Apples to Apples (<– add to your schedule)

In this speech, we will uncover many of secrets the security services industry doesn’t want you to know. We will follow three real world case examples to show why it’s important to know how to compare “”apples to apples”” when getting the help you need to evaluate, remediate, and mature your security program.

Come see Luke McOmie (Pyr0) at RVAsec 13!

Evan Booth is a builder and architect at Counter Hack, a company devoted to building fun and engaging challenges that educate and evaluate information security professionals. Armed with a profound fascination with how things are built, Evan has spent the past 20 years working on the creative, strategic, and engineering components of software and hardware projects for a wide variety of clients. Evan enjoys spending time with his family, taking stuff apart, and occasionally putting stuff back together again. X (Twitter): @evanbooth

Scaling Your Creative Output with AI: Lessons from SANS Holiday Hack Challenge 2023 (<– add to your schedule)

The rise in prominence of AI-powered content generation tools over the past year was tough to miss, and, heck, you have probably already created some cool stuff with them. Putting these tools to work in a meaningful, scalable way, however, can prove challenging.

In this talk, I will equip you with the technical knowledge required to build AI-enhanced tools, we’ll discuss strategies for identifying opportunities for said tools, and we’ll look at real-world examples from SANS Holiday Hack Challenge, the best darn free, seasonal hacking challenge in the world.

Come see Evan Booth at RVAsec 13!

Caleb Gross is the Director of Capability Development at Bishop Fox, where he leads a team of offensive security professionals specializing in attack surface research and vulnerability intelligence. Prior to coming to Bishop Fox, he served as an exploitation operator in the US Department of Defense’s most elite computer network exploitation (CNE) unit. As a top-rated military officer, Caleb led an offensive operations team in the US Air Force’s premier selectively manned cyber attack squadron. He studied at the University of Virginia and holds two degrees in computer science.

Josh Shomo leads the vulnerability research team within Bishop Fox’s Capability Development group. He investigates security issues in widely used applications and appliances, and produces vulnerability intelligence to prioritize offensive security research at Bishop Fox. Josh earned a master’s degree in computer science from Johns Hopkins University. Before joining Bishop Fox, Josh attended the Computer Network Operations Development Program (CNODP), the US Department of Defense’s foremost vehicle for developing technical leaders in information security. X (Twitter): @noperator

Patch Perfect: Harmonizing with LLMs to Find Security Vulns (<– add to your schedule)

Are LLMs a revolutionary leap forward for security research—or just spicy auto-complete?

The truth lies somewhere in between. This talk cuts through the hype and offers a practical perspective that’s grounded in real-world analysis of critical bugs in widely used products. We’ll walk through our process of harnessing large language models (LLMs) for patch-diffing in the context of N-day vulnerability research. Given a vague security advisory and some complicated code diffs, can an LLM get you closer to finding the right spot in the code to dig deeper? Which models work best for this task, and why? Let’s ditch the theory and get our hands dirty with iterative experimentation. Whether you’re a seasoned pentester, applied researcher, or budding practitioner, you’ll take away tactical lessons for incorporating AI into your security toolkit.

Come see Caleb Gross at RVAsec 13!

Evan Grant is based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia and works as a Security Researcher at Tenable. He got his start in infosec working with the Canadian Forces Reserves, and has been hooked ever since. Outside of work, he occasionally tries to climb rocks, at which he is definitely worse than Jimi.

Jimi Sebree is security researcher on Tenable’s Research team. With a strong background in software engineering and security, he bounces between research disciplines in an effort to appear knowledgeable about a variety of topics. Occasionally he succeeds in tricking someone into listening to his ramblings. X (Twitter): @dinobytes / @stargravy

Consumer Routers Still Suck (<– add to your schedule)

You know that little box in the corner of your house doing all the heavy lifting required to connect you (and, now that everyone is working from home, your company) with the rest of the world? Yeah, that one. It’s no secret that these things are oftentimes security nightmares for consumers, but have ISPs or the various networking vendors improved things over the years, or are they still just as terrible as we all think they are?

Over the last few years, we’ve done a deep dive into many of these devices to see what makes them tick and evaluate the risks posed to consumers. In this talk, we’ll provide a rapid fire assessment of a handful of these devices, showcase the commonalities between flaws discovered, shed some light on behind-the-scenes supply chain issues plaguing this industry, and discuss where we see things going from here.

Come see Jimi Sebree / Evan Grant at RVAsec 13!

Kevin Johnson is the Chief Executive Officer of Secure Ideas. Kevin has a long history in the IT field including system administration, network architecture and application development. He has been involved in building incident response and forensic teams, architecting security solutions for large enterprises and penetration testing everything from government agencies to Fortune 100 companies. In addition, Kevin is a faculty member at IANS and was an instructor and author for the SANS Institute. X (Twitter): @secureideas

Orion’s Quest: Navigating the Cyber Wilderness – Tales of Modern Penetration Testing (<– add to your schedule)

Focusing on real stories from the trenches, Orion’s Quest walks through a series of modern application and API attacks Kevin and his team have pulled off. The talk describes how we found and exploited the flaws and provides information so you can test yourself.

Come see Kevin Johnson at RVAsec 13!