Category: Announcement

Speaker feature: Steve Werby

May 9, 2014
AnnouncementConference

Steve Werby

@stevewerby / justifiableparanoia.com
Befriend / [OBFUSCATED]

Steve Werby is an independent security consultant and researcher at Befriend and a security architect at a Fortune 2^8 company. He’s held consultant, architect, and CISO roles in the information security field over the last 15 years.

 

Bad Advice, Unintended Consequences, and Broken Paradigms – Think & Act Different!

20 years ago information security was a low corporate priority that was the realm of technical geeks. Factors such as the rapidly-evolving threat environment and increased corporate impact have elevated it to a multidisciplinary risk management discipline…which sometimes has a seat at the table. This talk explores what we’re doing wrong, why it’s ineffective (or worse), and better ways of thinking and doing. You will learn to question the status quo, rethink existing paradigms, and leverage better approaches from information security and other disciplines. Think different! Act different!

Speaker feature: Schuyler Towne

May 7, 2014
AnnouncementConference

Schuyler Towne

@shoebox

Schuyler Towne is obsessed with locks. While he got his start picking locks competitively, his interest has since exploded into every aspect of their history, design and manipulation. He’s taught hackers, authors, cops and even toy designers. There is nothing Schuyler loves more than to talk locks with anyone who will listen. His interests in the history of physical security and design of locks provides a passionate background to his lectures and workshops on lockpicking. Currently he is attempting to recover lock patents lost in the 1836 patent office fire.

How to Make a Lock

Locks were one of the earliest complex mechanical devices. They are ubiquitous, yet remain very regional in concept. In this talk we’ll explore the process of inventing a lock. We’ll cover examples from around the world, some that persist to this day, some that failed before coming to market, and some that were , until recently, lost to history.

Ticket Transfers & Cancellations

May 7, 2014
Announcement

Did you know you can transfer an RVAsec ticket to a co-worker or friend directly in Eventbrite?

Log in to your account and go to My Tickets (you may need to create an account using the email address you registered).

Then you can view your Current Orders (select RVAsec), and “Edit details” for the ticket. Changing the “Contact Information” will update the name of the person registered to check in at the conference. You can also change the questions asked at registration, which will help us plan for parking, catering and other items.

Also, please note that no refunds will be issued after May 16th when registration closes.

Speaker feature: Ben Tomhave

May 5, 2014
AnnouncementConference

Ben Tomhave

@falconsview / blogs.gartner.com/ben-tomhave/
Gartner

Ben Tomhave is a Research Director with Gartner for Technical Professionals. He holds a Master of Science in Engineering Management (Information Security Management concentration) from The George Washington University. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), co-chair of the American Bar Association Information Security Committee within the Section of Science & Technology, former board member at large for SIRA (www.societyinforisk.org), and a member of ISSA (NoVA chapter). He is a published author and an experienced public speaker, including recent speaking engagements with RSA USA, the ISSA International Conference, Secure360, RVAsec and RMISC.

How to Achieve Success with Cyber Risk Assessment and Analysis

Technical professionals are frequently asked to lead or participate in risk assessments or risk analysis, as well as to provide recommendations for the best approach an enterprise should adopt. Unfortunately, there has been little guidance (outside of expensive consultants) on how exactly to achieve success in this area. Until now. On the basis of recent Gartner research, this session provides guidance for achieving success with cyber risk assessment and analysis.

Speaker Feature: Jayson E. Street

May 3, 2014
AnnouncementConference

Jayson E. Street

@jaysonstreet / f0rb1dd3n.com
Krypton Security

Jayson E. Street is an author of “Dissecting the hack: The F0rb1dd3n Network” from Syngress. Also creator of http://dissectingthehack.com He has also spoken at DEFCON, DerbyCon, UCON and at several other ‘CONs and colleges on a variety of Information Security subjects. His life story can be found on Google under “Jayson E. Street” *He is a highly carbonated speaker who has partaken of Pizza from Beijing to Brazil. He does not expect anybody to still be reading this far but if they are please note he was chosen as one of Time’s persons of the year for 2006. 😉

The hacker in the fun house mirror (A talk on skewed perspectives)

This is a talk on perspectives. Hackers, and hacking, are perceived
differently around the world and, in turn, some view our community and
what we do with different eyes than ours. I believe most
reports/papers about that topic are skewed and never give a quite
accurate global image. It’s all about perspectives, and these are what
I will explore in this talk. Being a foreign hacker attending a con,
or delivering an engagement, in an alien land often led to unexpected
situations that I will also recount. I am not only looking to
enlighten and entertain attendees with this talk, but also to have
them take a step back and look at the big picture, at what they are
part of; a global community that spreads beyond borders and
continents. My hope is that the contents of this talk will circulate
wider than just Con attendees so family, friends and co-workers get a
better understanding of who we are, what we stand for, and what that
thing is that brings us all together globally under one banner.

Speaker feature: David Sharpe and Katherine Trame

April 30, 2014
AnnouncementConference

David Sharpe and Katherine Trame

GE – GE-CIRT

David Sharpe and Katherine Trame are currently incident responders in GE-CIRT’s Advanced Threats team. The GE-CIRT Advanced Threats team provides world class incident response services for APT-related matters for the entire GE organization. David has a wide range of IT experience spanning 19 years. He has served in a variety of roles in Fortune 10 and Fortune 500 companies, ranging from systems programmer writing device drivers and operating system components, to large scale systems administration, to IT security. David joined GE-CIRT in 2011. Katherine served as an intelligence analyst with the Hampton, VA Police Division for five years during which she gained experience in tactical/operational intelligence and computer forensics. Katherine joined GE-CIRT in 2013.

Real World Intrusion Response – Lessons from the Trenches

Two battle-scarred, sleep-deprived GE-CIRT incident responders share lessons learned from the trenches, from their daily duties repelling real world, high-end network intrusions globally. This talk will include fresh thinking and innovative ideas in: intrusion response, intrusion detection, effective use of intel, and defensive operations. We will cover roughly a dozen (time permitting) cutting edge ideas and techniques that you can take back to your own organizations and put into practice right away.

How Bad-Ass is the “Secrets of Security” Workshop?

April 29, 2014
AnnouncementTraining

We asked Pete Herzog to tell us more about what people can expect at his OSSTMM class at RVAsec and he provided us a great response!

As humans, we like secrets as long as they don’t harm us for knowing them. We like knowing the dirt on people and the stories behind things. We like to know we’re right and they’re wrong and justifiably so. That’s what this workshop is about. It’s that feel-good, bad-ass workshop full of secrets, dirt, and indignation. Here’s why:

You may have been thrown by the word OSSTMM in the full title, “Secrets of Security with the OSSTMM.” Don’t worry. It’s not about the OSSTMM the way you might be wary that it’s about the OSSTMM. What this workshop won’t do is show you OSSTMM slides and tell you about it. Because that wouldn’t be bad-ass. It’s more about the bad-ass stuff not in the OSSTMM and why we can’t put it in.

For a moment, let me re-introduce you to ISECOM, our organization. Our mission is to make sense of security but how we do it is by not limiting contributors or ideas and we take any profession or hobbyist who wants to partake. And that’s where it gets weird. We’re a research organization with people all over the world working virtually so there are very few constraints to what we can actually research. So we try to reign it in around our mission but sometimes we just do things because somebody was curious. It’s that last part where things get really bad-ass because there’s no context.

When there’s no context that means anything can happen since we’re not constraining it to test a specific theory for security. What happens then is we might learn something spooky or strange or strangely true. Even when we end up with a security truth it can’t just be disseminated as is. It takes a lot of eloquence to take it from from a finding to practical use that can go into one of our publications like the OSSTMM. So sometimes we can’t. That’s also why we struggle to release a coherent document full of cool stuff re-written as practical steps but then it reads like stereo instructions. So in the workshop I’ll show you the behind-the-scenes footage, the stuff we refer to as the “Dark OSSTMM” which is the stuff without context so you can be equally interested or freaked out. Then I’ll show you with context. This is a bit of what it looks like behind the scenes:

 

Topics Research Without Context Adding Context for Practical Use
Vulnerability Management What would a defense look like that blocked every kind of attack all the time? How to measure an attack surface. How to classify threats based on operations instead of risk.
Electromagnetic Waves How electromagnetic waves affect personality, behavior, and health. Best ways to test large spectrum EM waves. Using EM waves in Social Engineering. Correlating HR data with EM maps. Analyzing EM wave collisions with business processes also using EM frequencies.
Sound waves Using HF sound waves to cause visual hallucinations. Ways to test for HF sound waves. Visual mapping of sound waves. Implementing high frequency sound waves above human perception for machine to machine communication. Using sound waves to causing chaos, confusion, and disruption within the workplace for social engineering and physical attacks.
Neurohacking Using electric signals to modify brain function. ??? We’ve got nothing yet but there’s some pretty cool stuff we can do from enhancing vision contrast to improving working memory to learning skills really quickly.
Trust What are the logical reasons we have to trust someone or something? Testing and measuring trust in people, things, third parties like Vendors and Clouds. Improving social engineering tests to include manipulated trusts. Expanding attack surface calculations to include people.
Perception Can we manipulate how people experience time with external signals or electrical impulses? ??? We’ve got no security context here yet but in some tests we found with direct contact we can increase or decrease physiological responses to hunger, wakefullness, sex, and the speed in which we perceive something.

 

This research is so bad-ass that it’s sometimes too bad-ass to go in the OSSTMM until we can find further context. So we share it with team members, classes, and subscribers who like to know about stuff like this, groups like: NIST, NSA, NASA, the Whitehouse, CERN, and even the Vatican.

But the point of this workshop is to make you a better security professional as well as more aware of what’s being done out there in security that’s not afraid to challenge concepts we’ve grown up with. So you can expect there will be a good deal of discussion.

Think of it this way:

If doctors worked like today’s security professionals, they’d know everything about all the ways a person could be killed and still use blood letting and leeches to heal us.

And this is what can you do with the stuff from the workshop:

  1. Bring more value to a penetration test and vulnerability scans

a) vastly increase the length of validity for the snapshot
b) analyze points of interaction
c) manage operational security controls including devops

  1. Enhance vulnerability management
  2. Identify the points of attack or points where interactions can cause problems
  3. Increase office and network efficiency by identifying unnecessary interactions
  4. Analyze third party services and vendors, including cloud using trust
  5. Be more smug for having more security dirt to dish at the watercoolers than your colleagues.

 

Additionally, for fun, I’ll show you how Heartbleed attacks and the latest Target hack look like according to some of our older research.

Finally, I’ll bring some neurohacking gear for workshop attendees to play with. So over-all, I can tell you this will be a bad-ass workshop.

About the Instructor

Pete Herzog is the lead security researcher and creator of the OSSTMM. His analysis of security, hacking, trust, fraud, and neuro-hacking have shown up in thousands of research papers, books, and government documents around the world. He’s passionate about hacking and figuring out how things (and people) work.

 

Title: The Secrets of Security with the OSSTMM
Instructor: Pete Herzog
Date: 6/4/2014, 9AM-5PM
Cost: $250

Register for this Class

 

Speaker feature: Nick Popovich

April 29, 2014
AnnouncementConference

Nick Popovich

@pipefish_ / pipefish.me
Sunera LLC

Nick Popovich’s passion is learning and exploring the offensive side of IT security. He works as a penetration tester, trying to raise the overall security posture of organizations through infrastructure security testing. Nick’s mission is to help individuals and organizations involved with the defensive side of InfoSec understand the mechanics and methods of the attackers they defend against, and to assist in realistically testing those defenses. He’s a lifelong learner and loves finding new ways to get under the hood of systems and networks. He is a father of two and a husband to one.

I Found a Thing and You Can Too: ISP’s Unauthenticated SOAP Service = Find (almost) All the Things!

This presentation is meant to encourage individuals to put the applications and software that they may use on their own home or small business networks under the research microscope. This is will be a discussion of a recent independent research project that eventually lead to an information disclosure vulnerability by a major U.S. ISP. This is also an example of when a coordinated disclosure goes right.
What began with simple curiosity into the inner workings of an application lead to the ability to list wireless network names and wireless encryption keys (among other things) armed only with a WAN IP address.

Normal Registration Closes 5/16 & Badge Updates

April 28, 2014
AnnouncementBadgesConference

Just a few more weeks to get RVAsec tickets at regular price–only $100!

And if that’s not enough incentive to purchase your tickets early, and you still want to attend, you had better pull the trigger soon! We have already sold approximately 85% of all available tickets for the event!

Don’t forget all the things you get with registration, including 2 full days of talks, parking, meals, snacks, drinks, after party, reception, prizes, a capture the flag contest, t-shirt & swag!

We only have a few badges from Hack.RVA that are not accounted for at this point.  For everyone that has signed up already, we should have you covered but the sooner you register the higher up the list you are to get an amazing badge from Hack.RVA.

So, to recap, we are closing in on selling out already, badges are almost all spoken for and the conference prices are as follows:

  • $100 regular price until 5/16
  • $150 late registration until 5/30

 

Register now!

 

 

Speaker feature: Joey Peloquin

April 27, 2014
AnnouncementConference

Joey Peloquin

@jdpeloquin / www.guidepointsecurity.com

GuidePoint Security

Joey has over 15 years of experience in the information technology industry specializing in information security. Prior to joining the GuidePoint Security team, he served as World Wide Security Architect for F5 Networks focusing on mobile and application security, and authentication and access security. His previous experience includes managing application and mobile security consulting teams at national security consulting firms, and leading JCPenney’s internal penetration-testing team. Joey is an active member of the information security community, speaking frequently at conferences and security events such as OWASP, TakeDownCon, ISSA, and has written, or appeared in, articles by Hakin9, SC Magazine, SD Times, and Information Week. He is also an accomplished technical scuba diver and PADI Divemaster.

Offensive Mobile Forensics

It’s official; enterprise mobility has been redefined, and Bring Your Own Device is a permanent reality, not a trend or fad. The problem everyone has failed to solve, however is not protection of the device itself. MDM, and now MAM are failed attempts to enable the secure use of personally-owned mobile devices. They’ve failed because they stop short of providing a holistic solution for data protection. Enter Offensive Mobile Forensics, a process in which an analyst employs use of the same techniques and tools potential attackers or criminals use on lost or stolen devices, to determine the actual risk of that loss or theft to the enterprise. What data is accessible?