In my last post (”Friday Recommendations“), I discussed some of the official and unofficial activities on Friday and summarized a few things that I’m going to focus on. There are some great planned talks as well as the Podcaster’s Meetup, the FireTalks, and a meetup party courtesy of HacDC.

In this post, I’m going to look at Saturday’s activities and give some recommendations.  As I mentioned previously, please be sure to review the full list of activities yourself just in case I’ve missed something that you might be interested in attending. I wouldn’t want to be blamed for you missing the talk of a lifetime due to my silly preferences.

Oh and before I get started, another ShmooCon ad has been released courtesy of the folks over at PSKL. This one is a hilarious Q&A … Matrix-style.

Saturday starts with the traditional “Built It!, Break It!,” and “Bring It On!” tracks. I’ve never been much of a “Bring It On!” type of person, so I’ll probably gravitate more towards the “Build It! and Break It!” tracks like I’ve done in previous years. Although I personally won’t be attending them, there are several topics in the “Bring It On!” track that really peaked my curiosity, and I’d definitely advise taking a closer look at them if the “Bring It On!” track is your type of thing. But now, back to the “Built It! and Break It!” tracks… 

Starting at 10:00am in the “Break It!” track, the “Exploring Novel Ways in Building Botnets” by Enno Rey and Daniel Mende would be my pick due to my fascination with botnets.  In the “Build It!” track, there seems to be a trend with wireless—another fascination of mine. Because of this fascination, I’ll probably head to Michael Ossmann’s and Dominic Spill’s talk on “Building an All-Channel Bluetooth Monitor” at 11:00am. Continuing on the wireless trend, Joshua Abraham’s and Ben Smith’s talk at noon—“Next Generation Wireless Recon – Visualizing the Airwaves”—looks interesting. Visualization seems to be big these days, especially with the amount of information we have to process to determine a true security event. While this talk focuses on a slightly different theme, it may provide some insights into other visualization techniques.

After a quick lunch at Harry’s Pub (if I can get a table), I’ll most likely be heading over to the must-not-miss Jay Beale talk on “Man in the Middling: Everything with the Middler” at 2:00pm. There has been a lot of talk on multiple mailing lists about the release of his tool, The Middler. So as usual, Jay’s session will probably be standing room only.

Continuing on the wireless trend, the “Building Wireless Sensor Hardware and Software” by Travis Goodspeed and Joshua Gourmeau may be a nice fit at 3:00pm. But the “Break It!” track also seems to include another interesting wireless talk called “802.11 ObgYn or ‘Spread Your Spectrum’” by Rick Farina (which will focus on the topic of tuning your wifi card to operate on licensed frequencies), making it a tough choice between the two. In my opinion, the one with the creative name may win out.

For the last two talks of the day, I’ll probably be focusing on the “Break It!” track. Ennoy Rey and Daniel Mende will be having a busy Saturday as they’ll also be presenting “All Your Packets are Belong to Us: Attacking Backbone Technologies” at 4:00pm.

At 5:00pm, David Kennedy’s talk “The Fast-Track Suite: Advanced Penetration Techniques Made Easy” looks fun. Who can pass up a session with pen testing in the name? Plus you get to learn about an interesting tool built into BackTrack 3.

As the main sessions wind down, the evening activities start to get going. Hack or Halo begins at 6:30pm, the Saturday night edition of FireTalks get going at 7:30pm, and the official ShmooCon party starts at 9:00pm. Hack or Halo consists of two challenges; the “Hack” portion involves teams solving a bunch of puzzles (from simple brainteasers to pwning a computer), and the “Halo” competition involves several rounds of people trying to get body counts as high as possible.  The top competitors from each round move forward until a winner is decided.

If Hack or Halo doesn’t interest you, then the FireTalks at 7:30pm provide another after-dinner option. The exact talks don’t look like they’re going to be decided until 7:30pm. Presentations will be determined on a first-come, first-serve basis. So the first four presenters to the person with the clipboard win! I assume the talks will take place around the press room as they did on Friday night.

If you’re not interested in the FireTalks or the Hack or Halo activities, you can check out PaulDotCom’s live podcast at 8:00pm. You can check out the post on his blog for more details, or you can listen in starting 7:45pm on the PaulDotCom UStream Channel or the PaulDotCom Radio on Icecast.  

But wait, there’s more! After Hack or Halo or the FireTalks, the official Saturday night ShmooCon Party will start at 9:00pm. You can also check out the DualCore DJing Party if you’re in the mood for some creative music. At this point, the location for both parties is still TBD, but be sure to keep up with the various Twitter feeds—@shmoocon, @podcastmeetup, @securitytwits, @novainfosec, @grecs—that I previously mentioned for updates.

In my next post, I’ll be discussing Sunday’s activities as well as our sad return to normal life. And if you’ve heard anything on the final location of the ShmooCon party, please let me and everyone else know in the comments below.

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Tags: botnet, conference, event, fast-track, firetalk, infosec, middler, nova, penetration, reminder, saturday, shmoocon, the shmoo group, update, wifi, wireless

This entry was posted on February 6, 2009 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Infosec Conferences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.