Jeremy at Blackhat

Jeremy Rauch | July 31st, 2006 | Filed Under: Uncategorized

Since all of the cool kids are saying which talks they’ll be at during Blackhat, I feel its my duty, as Matasano’s coolest kid, to let you all know where I’ll be. In no particular order:

• Halvar’s talk: I’ve been lucky enough to see Halvar at a number of Blackhats over the years. In spite of his disclaimers in his comments to Dino’s post the other day, his talks are always interesting. Personally, I find tool demos at talks to be a mixed bag — I’d much rather hear Halvar’s thoughts on the challenges that face people doing binary reverse engineering. My money says he has some really cool ideas on how to overcome them. He’s also one of the nicest guys in computer security, so make sure to say “hi” to him.
• Chris Eng: Breaking Crypto Without Keys: Analyzing Data in Web Applications: Chris is a super smart guy, with a mysterious NSA background. Ooooh scary. Seriously, though — I’ve heard some rumors about what Chris will be speaking about, and it ain’t no rot-13 breaking.
• David Hulton + Dan Moniz: FPGA hacks: Put the word FPGA in your talk title, and I’m there. Having done some work with FPGA’s (but not in a computer security setting), I’m always interested to see what people come up with.
• FX: The Blackberry Case: I wish! I get the “privilege” of speaking opposite FX, otherwise I’d be at this one. Our phones are turning in to insane little networked computers, and I’m curious to hear what FX has to say. Hopefully one of my traitorous coworkers, who apparently want to go to FX’s talk instead of mine will let me know what he has to say.

I’d put my own talk, or those of Dino or Dave/Tom, but that smacks of…is nepotism the term? Close enough. The Dave/Tom talk I’m familiar with — I’ve actually delivered pieces of the talk that sort of evolved in to this one. Its chock full of intrigue, espionage and action. Definitely the makings of a summer blockbuster.

I haven’t seen Dino’s talk yet — no one has, but judging from his exciting ramblings over the last few months, this one is sure to be a fun one. However, he keeps asking me weird questions about my machine stability, and won’t tell me why. Go to his talk, and maybe he’ll let you know.