Hack in the Box | Amsterdam 2015 | HITB

Hack in the Box | Amsterdam 2015 | HITB

HITB HAXPO | Date: 26th - 29th May 2015

On May 27 we arrived in Amsterdam and entered the hackBoat in an Amsterdam suburb, where we'd work and live for the next three days. The windows look out to the Gracht river, and the ducks wanted our bread right ASAP. Soon after we arrived, our Hacker Grandpa John Draper -- aka Cap'n Crunch -- came as well. It was nice to meet our good old friend in the city that we love so much. Our first stop was a friendly cafe where we enjoyed the whole menu.

We headed over to HITB/HAXPO at the impressive "De Beurs van Berlage" building in the city center to meet with Events Mastermind Dhillon and to walk over to the HAXPO, the free 3-day Technology expo for hackers, makers, builders, and breakers. As always, we had the most fun in the makers and builders corner. It did not take long to run into Mitch Altman, and his solder workshop for everyone. Mitch, the San Francisco-based hacker and inventor, is best known for inventing TV-B-Gone, a one-button universal remote control to be used for turning off TVs in public places.

We ended the day on the hackBoat after a short stop in a cafe where I mastered Benjamin on the Mrs. Pacman Arcade machine.

On Day 2, we woke up with the ducks in front of the window. After breakfast, we entered the Con and met with Mano Paul and his lovely family. His oldest son Reuben A. Paul -- aka RAPst4ar -- doesn't need a long introduction here. We attended his talk about the "A to Z of Cyber Security - from the perspective of a 9-year old."

It was a professional talk and speakers could learn how to structure a talk from the beginning. Reuben was very focused and presented his A to Z letter after letter, with the perspective of how he would explain the technical details to a nine year old friend. After the A to Z, he showed hacking skills to all professionals by life hacking an android phone, capturing the device camera, and displaying Dhillon's email password to a stunned crowd. Well, done, young man!

John "Crunch" Draper offered a Talk with the Hackers and Security Specialists in the open HAXPO area. We left to feed the ducks and give some revenge to guys who sent out the "Unicode of Death" on iPhones. They will never again send code trash to friends. It was a lot of fun.

On Day 3, we had a walk through the old city center. This town is filled with interesting and colorful people. At 10 am, Benjamin had an interview with the BBC about the Bug Bounty scene and the rest of the crew had a strong coffee.

While Cap'n John had meetings, we had a chat with Saumil Shah who would present his ground-shaking Stegosploit image hack in just a few moments. Saumil: "A good exploit is one that is delivered in style.”

Stegosploit is the result of malicious exploit code hidden within pixels of the image carrying it. We are planning an interview with him in a few days, and it will be published here in the magazine soon.

We like to thank Dhillon and his amazing crew for organizing this great event and the hospitality we enjoyed. HITB is an event we already penciled into our calendar for next year again. See you all again then!

I'm ending with a quote of a vulnerability lab partner:

“HITB is a must attend conference – cutting edge technical presentations and trainings” – Senior Director, Microsoft

Links:

- http://www.hitb.org
- http://cornfieldelectronics.com | Mitch Altman
- http://cybershaolin.org | Reuben A. Paul
- http://www.net-square.com | Saumil Shah
- http://webcrunchers.com | John Draper aka Cap'n Crunch