USA here I come!!!

Well, when I first got my job with Portcullis I knew that they had sent their whole pen test team to DEFCON and that they would be sending at least 10 members this year. The idea of being sent to Las Vegas for a big hacker conference seemed to appeal to me, and I have been hoping I'd be one of those lucky few (or many as the case is). The DEFCON conference rides on the back of the Blackhat briefings which seems to be the more intense cooperate one where there are hands on seminars. The advantage of Black hats is you get to do what they talk about and have the expert help you through it. This runs for 2 days, after which there are some open conferences and DEFCON.

Well black hats being a 2 day intensive with a practical side costs a lot of money and so most of the hackers and smaller company penetration testers go to DEFCON as it is very inexpensive. Only the flight there and accommodation is expensive, and for such a large team this adds up. So enough of the background.

I have wanted to go the DEFCON for a while (as it's the more likely one I'd be able to go to), and so was hoping that work would send me. The Doc (one of the bosses) teased me with something the day before about Halvar Flake (wrote a paper on heap overflows and is presenting at both black hats and DEFCON). So I got pretty excited as this will help to no end with writing a heap exploit I've been working on and probably means I get to go to the US for DEFCON.

Well it turns out a little different to what I thought, he is going to send Wade (another aussie), Martin (a crazy brit) and me to Halvar Flakes 2 day black hats presentation Analyzing Software for Security Vulnerabilities. Now that is way cool, expert guidance for accessing and writing exploits for applications. I am very impressed and very excited to have this opportunity, and hope to have a great time in the USA. I have assumed I'll be going to DEFCON too since it doesn't cost much to go to that and I've already been flown over.

Well that's my big news!!!

Paul.