DEF CON 34

I’ll be in Las Vegas the week of DEF CON 34: teaching workshops, DJ’ing parties, judging, meeting up, and more. This page serves as a reference to my activities across the hacker conferences from August 2nd to 10th, including Black Hat USA, BSides Las Vegas, and DEF CON 34.

My Content

DEF CON Workshop: Learning to Reverse Engineer Compiled C as We Learn to Write it

Software reverse engineering is a fundamental skill: a prerequisite to engaging with many fields of study in computer security that depend on low-level knowledge. Malware analysis, vulnerability research, offensive tool development, and digital forensics all involve the analysis of code which has been compiled, obfuscated, or otherwise stripped of useful names, data types, comments, and other human-readable information. Without the ability to read disassembled code, you will not be able to understand code that your computer will happily execute.

In this workshop, I will guide you through learning to read disassembled code while you learn C. We will progress through the C programming language’s constructs with as few assumptions as possible about your background, and at each stage we will reverse engineer the compiler’s output in Ghidra and trace through with a debugger to understand the generated code. You do not need any prior experience in programming.

I will also be demonstrating useful techniques for using locally-hosted large language models to aid in the learning process. Use AI to improve your own skillset, rather than using it to do the work for you.

Malware Village: Introduction to Reverse Engineering With Ghidra

In this workshop, I will be presenting a live and unscripted introduction to using Ghidra to reverse engineer real malware samples, targeting people who are new to malware reverse engineering, but have some programming background.

I will cover the Ghidra user interface, how to load samples, perform initial processing, and how to navigate around a malicious binary. Then, for most of the workshop time, I will provide commentary, advice, heuristics, and approaches for malware analysis as the workshop group takes a look at one or more samples live on the projector.

This workshop is meant to be interactive, driven by attendee questions and interests. Beyond the essentials needed to load malware into Ghidra, the workshop attendees and I will be collaborating on the direction of the workshop material.

DJ Sets

House music and house music accessories.

SecKC the WHOLE WIDE WORLD

Party Line @ DC34

Other Places I’ll Be

Whose Slide is It Anyway?

I’ll be on the judge’s panel for Whose Slide is it Anyway, an improv comedy game show where contestants present talks using slide decks they have never seen before. Judging, roasting, and possibly praising the presentation skills of anyone brave enough to get on stage. Bouncing between this and SecKC.

General Attendance

I’ll be in attendance at Black Hat USA (meetings and party hopping) and BSides Las Vegas. From Thursday onward I’ll be at DEF CON, teaching, presenting, and roaming the con whenever I’m not busy.

Meetup & Contact

Meeting up, questions/advice/mentoring, war stories, venting, ranting. Don’t know anyone at the conferences? You do now.