Brucon 2010: a recap
I was at Brucon 2010 last week, and it was a blast! The ambiance at the con was very much reminiscent of Defcon’s: people talking passionately about security in a relaxed, geek-and-caffeine-rich environment. In the past, when attending infosec cons I tend to go to all the talks – this time, I decided to go to as many workshops as possible. I must say, I was not disappointed at all – while talks are often absolutely fascinating and wildly entertaining, workshops provide a chance to understand something at a much deeper level and allow you to test your knowledge of the topic; it also allows the speaker to tune her content to the audience in a much more interactive manner, providing more, or less, background information according to the crowd’s grasp of the subject. For instance, during the malicious PDF analysis workshop, Didier Stevens provided an overview of the PDF structure and started working through his samples, but quickly started skipping through examples he thought were obvious and allotting more time to the ‘juicy bits’. ...