Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Panel Selected for DefCon 18

Panel: Hacking The Future: Weaponizing the Next Generation

Join this panel of "experts" who will discuss, debate, enlighten, and do battle on the topic of Hacker Parenting. From a multitude of viewpoints - paternal, maternal, fictive aunt and victim - the methodologies and techniques of applying the hacker mindset to parenting will be discussed. It is expected that the audience will participate as this topic is one on which everyone has an opinion. Maybe it's possible to do great work and develop a generation of people primed to hack the planet and take over.

James Arlen CISA, sometimes known as Myrcurial, is a security consultant usually found in tall buildings wearing a suit, founder of the Think|Haus hackerspace, columnist at Liquidmatrix Security Digest, Infosec Geek, Hacker, Social Activist, Author, Speaker and Parent. He's been at this security game for more than 15 years and loves blinky lights and shiny things. Cyber.

James Costello is a project manager for a compliancy focused hosting company in the Midwest. He is a charter member and current secretary/vice president of affiliate relations for the Cowtown Computer Congress. He holds a BA from the University of Saint Mary and in his free time enjoys reading scifi, watching British television and repurposing electronic devices.

Leigh Honeywell is a jane of many trades. By day she works as a security consultant while finishing up a degree at the University of Toronto. By night (and sometimes over lunch) she is a co-founder and director of HackLab.TO, Toronto's hacker space. She also serves on the board of advisors of the SECtor security conference, has been a Google Summer of Code mentor, and is an avid cyclist, science fiction nerd, and traveller.

Tim Krabec is the owner of a Small Computer Shop. A Vice President of the South Florida Chapter of the ISSA, Secretary of ASIS chapter 254. He is a former foster parent caring for over 40 children. He currently has 4 children with the 5th on the way. He holds a BS in CS for Florida Atlantic University, in what little free time he has he enjoys watching Syfy and woodworking.

Tiffany Strauchs Rad MA, MBA, JD, is a lawyer, hacker, and college professor. She has presented privacy and technical research at Black Hat USA, DEFCON, Hackers on Planet Earth, Hacking at Random, and Pumpcon. She also likes cars and hacks them.

There is a story of serendipity to go along with this talk.
At DefCon last year, I met Tim Krabec in person for the first time and while we were having dinner after closing ceremonies with his wife and kids we hit upon the idea of creating a talk about how hacker parents work with their kids. We submitted the talk to ShmooCon but did not get accepted. This turned out to be fortunate for us because it allowed us to adjust our strategy for DefCon. One of the decisions we made was to invite others to join and to give us more diversity by adding a mom. My first thought was @securityintern who I had met last year at DefCon as well.

So I contacted Jackie and she said she'd love to help but James (@myrcurial) was already working on a talk for NotaCon (video of which can be seen here -
http://vimeo.com/myrcurial). I immediately contacted James and set into motion combining the two talks into one great big talk at DefCon. After several conference calls with James and the rest of the crew, James submitted the talk to DefCon and we waited

And waited. Apparently this was another good year for submissions (thanks @Niki7a for all your hard work).

Then yesterday I received the following tweet from James
@n0b0d4 you should go look at the DEF CON speaker's list #justsayin

So that makes another confirmation that I will be in attendance this year.

I am excited to be a panelist and look forward to see many security compatriots out there.

Be safe out there.
James