
This year was a stroke of genius: the badges contained a retro roleplaying game you could access via USB, 30 LEDs, and other IO ports. Yet, this year there was a ton of good stuff, much of it fresh and serious, and the show was generally much better run. Over the past few years, there have been concerns Black Hat USA was just becoming RSA with blackjack and hookers, thanks to its overly corporate posture. It’s the smallest show of the three, and has, to my mind, the highest percentage of security vulnerability researchers and exploiters of the trio, plus a growing number of academics.

The other strength of BSides is the networking opportunities, if you want to get to know people elbows deep in firmware and the glue that keeps the internet stuck together. Then again, your humble hack is possibly biased because he co-presented at BSides LV. BSides started life as an alternative to the increasingly corporate-friendly events, and the quality of the talks was better than many of those being held down the road at the larger Black Hat.

#Blackhat defcon conference 2018 how to#
A smooth startīSides Las Vegas kicked off its sessions on Tuesday with a series of talks, many highly technical, on how to break in various vulnerable bits of technology.

This tension would manifest itself in the middle of the week and then grow to be one of the major talking points of DEF CON, leading to the head of the show’s security tending his resignation, and some attendees threatening a boycott.
