2008-10-10:

SekIT 2008

lecture:easy
Blah, I left the translation of the previous news from PL to EN for "tomorrow morning", and the "tomorrow morning" became "next week". But since the next week is here... let's talk about Sex baby^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H SekIT 2008 (see my previous posts too).

SekIT 2008 was a new polish conference, that took place for the first time this year. And it was all in polish. Now why would a polish language security conference interest and English-speaking reader? Well, since this conference was successful, the next one is planed to be an international English-language one. So maybe my review will help You decide next year if it is worth coming to Poland for the next SekIT.

OK, so as I stated, SekIT 2008 was the first SekIT conference ever and it made by people (SapoArt) who didn't seem to have organized previously any security conference. So I didn't have any big expectations for it. But it turned out to be great! >

The lecturers were invited to Opole city a day earlier, and were accommodated in a very cool hotel (the hotel was really solid, so a big plus for the orgs). On that evening, a dinner for the lecturers and the organizers was to take place, but I got to know some lecturers a few hours before that, when we went to get something to it in a local pizzeria - I met there Iwo Graj (from securityreason.com) and his fiancée. Later, we landed in Borys's room, where Adam Zabrocki (aka pi3) and Łukasz Raczyło joined us. Later the dinner finally took place, and I could meet the rest of the speakers (with few exceptions), and after that, we tried to do the impossible - find an unoccupied table in some pub (which, on Friday evening, was of course impossible), just to finally get back to the hotel to finish the slide shows for the next day...

The conference began at 8am in the night (nope, it's not 8am in the morning... 10am is in the morning, 8am is still the night ;p). The interesting thing is that there was no standard registration desk - as I have learned, the orgs have sent the IDs to the participants earlier by analog mail - it's quite a good idea, and saves some time too... although I think the Polish Post is the weak chain link here, but it seemed that the orgs had prepared for it as well.

I must admit that the lectures were good, both interesting and entertaining. The one I like the best, was pi3's lecture on exploiting on Linux x86, especially that he added some tasty morsels at the end (seems that TCP/IP spoofing is not as dead as one might think). The guys from BotHunters blog - Borys and Patryk - made a great lecture on botnets, Łukasz Raczyło showed common mistakes in web security, with tasty examples, and dr Andrzej Niemiec had a great summarizing talk on security on the national/international level. Additionally, Dariusz Puchalak showed that SSH is a quite large toolbox (he'll talk about it again on IT Underground this year), Piotr Oleszkiewicz demonstrated theoretical and applied web security (with a very cool device that I would like to get my hands on... but since it costs like 4*10^5$, I don't think I'm buying it soon ;>). Michał's lecture was not really my area, so I can't say much about it, and the lawyers lecture turned into a discussion panel that lasted until the lunch was almost cold - the most funny part was when someone asked if he is obligated to give the police the decryption key to his hard disk - the lawyer replied that if he doesn't, the police will decrypt it anyway - the statement really amused the audience ;>

Well, the lunch was delicious =^^=. I could talk with some interesting people (greetz to the sir in Linux jumper, whom I can't recall by name, and of course to KaGieBe, Unknow, Vitro and j4ck ;>).

And so the official part of the conference ended (around 9pm). The speakers had another dinner, which turned to yet another discussion panel that lasted until 1am. In the morning I got back to Wrocław, and that would be the end of SekIT for me.

Summing up... SekIT 2008 was a great conference, and so, next year, be sure to come. I will be there for sure =^^=. The orgs did a great job (some minor mistakes could be noted, but nothing that cannot be corrected in the future edition), the lectures were interesting and the food was great =^^=. So good work SapoArt, thanks to all the great people I got to meet, and c u next year ;>

And that would be all for today.

ps. seems that hackerchallenge was moved to the next week...

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