Codebits and academia

29Nov10

Not even gonna bother with giving the same excuse again, I have indeed been slacking on my blogging, mostly due to the events am about to describe.

Codebits

The best way to describe Codebits is “a major slap across my face” I have been to quite a few events in Portugal related to IT, and organised by Portuguese people and I must say they always felt like second class events, that could not match up with internacional events such as InfoSec, DefCon, BH, etc etc etc ( all major conferences). Codebits changed all that, it was an AMAZING 3 day event, with an amazing organisation. Again, it wasn’t perfect but it was definitely a first class event. I met some really interesting people and got to spend time with some old buddies : @morisson @vd @nunoloureiro @tmendo @klinzter @oligenhex ! It was amazing seeing all these guys and associating some twitter handles with some faces. During Codebits there was a security competition, where me, @morisson, @oligenhex and @klinzter qualified as a team. Our team leader was @morisson and we had the best team leader anyone could ever ask for. He was calm and did an amazing work on exploitation of web apps. Truth said, we did the best we could, we had lots of fun and there is always next year. (Note to self: Learn more on web application security defense/exploitation). And pre-test some kernel exploits (Any of you know why @taviso exploit didnt work yet?).

A second topic I want to discuss about Codebits are the presentations! I presented at Codebits, as usual a talk about Computer Forensics, this time a modified version, that tried to explain without any F U D, in general I believe my presentation went well and the comments on twitter reflect that. I know that some of my slides had some extra bits of information that could have been more synthesised but hey, it will get there. I have now done this presentation 3 times this year and ran the workshop 2 times. It is enough. I now need to start looking at a new topic to start writing for 2011, because truth said I do enjoy this whole presenting at conferences thing. If needed I will run my Computer Forensics presentation/workshop if some organisation asks me to but other then that I believe I am now done with it. I had an amazing year conference wise and things went really well for me. About the other talks at Codebits: Well some of them were pretty good, others were absolutely a WASTE of time. I really enjoyed Lenz Grimmer Quadrocopter talk and @celso Spacebits talk was AMAZING as well and everyone that loves electronics should check out their page (spacebits.eu) because it really is a good project. Another talk that I realllllly enjoyed was Brian Suda’s talk about Collecting and Visualising Data, as usual @morisson kicked some ass giving a really good talk on Web App Pentest and same for @NunoLoureiro and @Tmendo, who gave a talk on Advanced SQL Injections.

Things that in my opinion should be improved next Codebits?

1. Lighting ( I get all the green lighting to make it the “Codebits mood” but we could really use some areas with PROPER lights
2. More chairs/tables

Thats it. Im usually quite picky about stuff but those 2 points are really the only 2 things I have to comment about.

 

Conclusion: Team Sapo made an amazing work at that event, and I am really hyped about Codebits 2011!

Moving along to next topic.

MSc, PhD,Teaching aka Academia

*Sigh* This is a topic that at the moment is very hard for me to write about, very hard for several reasons, one of them being that most of my mates LEFT to go and work for companies out of Luton. Vlad moved to Egham and is working for @fsecureukteam and Igor is also working for a big company down in London. I am very happy and proud of these guys but miss them dearly. Our long geek chats and drinking were amazing, and we had a really good year here in Luton. I am still waiting to defend my thesis, hopefully will manage to get that soon, while waiting I have started my PhD reading papers to get a proposal written, Im currently under the supervision of Prof. Carsten Maple and Dr. Vladimir Dyo . My research will be on the topic of Wireless Sensor Networks which is an area relatively new to me, this makes me happy rather then nervous as I will learn lots and hopefully write good papers on it. Hey who knows, maybe ill even mix Security with WSN and my around the world presentation for next year will focus on that! Meanwhile am also teaching! This has been both fun and boring, fun because I have met some interesting characters that really make it fun to teach them, boring because some of the topics am teaching are of 0 interest to me (!!!Microsoft Access!!!) and I really don’t like them!

Many people have been asking me if going into academic was the right choice instead of going to work for a company. Well truth is, I don’t know. I can see how in the long run getting a PhD is a good thing, but getting early experience is also an amazing thing, and I guess I never really got an offer from a company that did something that would really interest me.

 

Oh I forgot this:

LOOK MOM AM ON TV!

This is it for now.

Hopefully will be able to post soon! I live with a E. now, so when am not cleaning or cooking or working I get to sleep! she is still awesome tho!

Filed under: Computers, linux, Msc, Network Security, Speaker, Uncategorized, University of Bedfordshire   |  3 Comments