So recently I attended a hackers conference called WAHCKon. It stands for something like West Australia Hackers Conference (with a K somewhere...). It is hosted in Perth, Australia (WA), and in its second year this year. I've attended both of them so far (and spoken at both). Location both years have been at Edith Cowan University. Both years have been a 2 day format, over a weekend.
This post will outline some of the talks that I found interesting. A full list of the is available on the talks page of wahckon's site. If I missed any, it doesn't mean it was bad, more that I can't remember enough details that I can write a good blurb a number of weeks later. I will also blog a bit about my travels in Perth in a follow up post.
Shooting Clay Pidgins - Matt Jones
This talk was all about the speakers experience of hacking some of the popular instant messaging clients out at the moment. Most notably Pidgin (or libpurple), because you know, everyone uses that! He found a few bugs while on a plane trip from memory, reported them, gave patches. Good stuff!
Another client mentioned was BitMessage, which is a bitcoin esq style client, which has many downfalls and not many ups.
There was a third client, but I can't recall that one off the top of my head.
Bitcoin: Or how I almost starved to death - Hugh Davenport
So disclaimer: this was my talk. Based off my month on bitcoin, which I blogged about under the monthonbitcoin tag. Read that, and the summaries to get an idea of what I got up to. I've also made a summary of the month post.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back (On the Difficulty of Validating your Legitimacy as a Browser Extension and other Browser Break-dancing) - Christian Fritchot
A talk about BeEF (Browser Exploitation Framework Project). If you haven't seen this before and are into security, have a look. It is pretty scary how much this can do in terms of client side attacks. Christian went over some of the new features. I kind of liked the Metasploit-esq cli interface.
Bending the Light, Optical Trickery in the 21st Century - trogs
A repeat (and renewal) of a Kiwicon 4 talk, all about fibre networks, mainly in NZ. Mentioned some equipment you could get if you want to try it out, and how it all works.
Microsoft Kinect - From Hax to Official Encouragement - Mensly
Man, this was a good talk. Mensly showed us how hackers had gone about getting the Kinect hooked up to a PC and reversing the protocol so it worked. Now Microsoft have released an SDK on it, so you can actually legitimately use it. He had some pretty cool demos, and the demo gods were in the main .. happy.
Sorry about my sexist robot, and how to get frisked at the airport (image recognition and biometrics) - Lexy
I learnt I was a female, I should wear more ties. Apparently airport security software uses a necktie to determine sex. Weird and scary.
Naked Forensics - Chris Courtis
How to do forensics on the cheap. TL;DR. Have a smart phone. Works wonders.
Manipulating Human Minds: The Psychological side of Social Engineering - Christina Camilleri
Good to see females getting up and talking at a hackers conference. Should be a friendly environment, but sadly just isn't... Christina gave a great talk about social engineering. If you are interested in social engineering, or don't know what it is, read it up and learn. It is crazy how much stuff you can do by simply picking up a phone!