BSides LV General CFP is now open and accepting submissions until MAY 1rst.

The Proving Ground CFP is now closed. Acceptances for and mentor pairings for PG speakers will go out on April 21rst.

BSides LV is accepting submissions for the following tracks at this time:

An example submission is detailed at the bottom of this page. To increase your proposal's chances of being judged effectively (and favorably!) please consult it when designing your own proposals.

Breaking Ground

A track where hackers new and old can show off their latest and greatest while interacting with our participants and getting feedback, input and opinion. No preaching from the podium at a passive audience. It is a place where presenters can talk about their newest attack or defensive research, tools, new and novel approaches to InfoSec and to talk about the upcoming areas hackers should be digging into. Talks are either 20 or 45 minutes in length, and often include demos (live or otherwise). Some previous talks include reverse engineering malware in Go, network forensics in an encrypted world, anti-honeypot approach, hacking crypto currencies, 0-days in online services, mobile phone binary hacking.

Common Ground

All other topics of “common” interest to the security community. What should we, as hackers and the security community, know about? Talks in this track have included everything from hardware hacking to law & policy lock picking to mental health to appsec, and everything in between. Talks often but not always assume only minimal specialized background; they are always framed and interactive discussions with your peers and fellow researchers. No passive lectures “at” an audience.

PasswordsCon

Focused on the (in)security of passwords and other authentication solutions, bringing together security researchers, password crackers, and experts in password security from around the globe in order to better understand and address the challenges surrounding digital authentication. This track explores all facets of authentication security, from analysis and education to creating, securing, cracking, and exploiting authentication solutions.

Ground Floor

Foundational talks on topics relevant to security practitioners today. Also, it was originally in Copa so it was literally on the ground floor. Get, it? We get a ton of talks every year that don’t quite fit Breaking Ground, or aren’t quite esoteric enough for Common Ground, but that we really want to be able to share. Since we’re BSides, it hurts our blackened, twisted little hearts to pass on a good talk just because there’s no room in the program. So we made this track, and filled it with the great stuff we couldn’t put in one of the other tracks. Careful. If it goes well, we may get hotel guests to sign a waiver so we can hold tracks in every hotel room next year. You have been warned.

Ground Truth

A place where hackers, academics, and data science practitioners can share ideas, ask questions, and compare notes. It is a venue for talks rooted in scientific approaches to infosec, such as statistical analysis, machine learning, and less common disciplines like linguistics. We are excited to showcase talks on theoretical topics, examples of successful and failed attempts to apply techniques in practice, software and data set releases, and discussions of relevant techniques from related fields. Some past topics of interest have included: data processes, methods for getting or cleaning data, basic statistics done well, data visualization, real science (scientific method/hypothesis testing), practical applications of data science in production, academic research (both student and faculty), machine learning, attacking machine learning and data science, risks of machine learning and data science, and the use of analytics to discover the story told by the data.

Hire Ground

A career-focused track with sessions to provide the tools and knowledge needed for job search and career development. This year, for the first time, BSides LV will be changing our Hire Ground coaching format to offer facilitated group discussions on particular career development topics. Experts interested in guiding such sessions can apply to do so through our CFP.

Hire Ground Career Discussion Groups

Hire Ground Career Discussion groups are facilitated group discussions on a particular career development topic. We are open to community voices on topics of interest, but some examples of possible topics are:

• Path to CISO
• Moving to Management
• Career Move Discussions with your Manager
• Salary Negotiation
• Effective Resumés
• Using LinkedIn for Job Search
• Showcasing Your Portfolio
• Military Transitions
• Industry Specific Career Advice (Healthcare, Finance, Gambling, Gaming, Public Sector, NonProfit, Academic, ICS, Manufacturing, etc.)

The discussion groups should be constructed to impart specific information to the participants, as well as to facilitate knowledge sharing and community networking. Proposals must list 3-5 key takeaways that participants will learn from the discussion. These will be printed out on a handout for participants.

Discussion Group Facilitator Responsibilities and Qualifications:

1. Accomplished discussion leader who can present a discussion topic and facilitate the discussion.
2. Accomplished discussion leader who can manage thoughtful and respectful discussion on the subject matter.
3. Accomplished subject matter expert on a key career development topic.

Discussion Group Mechanics:

The discussion leader will facilitate two 30-minute discussion groups.
The first discussion will run for 30 minutes, then there will be a 30-minute break before repeating a second 30-minute discussion session on the same topic.

I Am The Cavalry

The I Am The Cavalry track focuses on security issues that can affect public safety and human life, across our domains: Transportation, Healthcare, Infrastructure, and Home IoT. Discussions cover technical, public policy, societal, and media topics. Our goal is to catalyze action faster than it would have happened otherwise, with BSidesLV participants.

I Am The Cavalry has been at its best shining a light on dark parts of the map. This work takes deep knowledge, persistence, and ambassadorship. Along with our industry and public policy teammates, we have nudged and catalyzed transformational changes, as opposed to incremental ones.

To catalyze action toward transformational change, the I Am The Cavalry track will curate talks that identify and develop “shovel-ready” projects to empower our volunteers toward measurable or observable outcomes. For instance,- Create tools to increase awareness and understanding of I Am The Cavalry, including transformational outcomes, resources, and individuals. Develop capabilities for ambassadorship and translation among the hacker community. Promote new projects that have leadership, structure, and momentum. Feature calls to action for “shovel-ready” projects or tasks – typically those that only need scale or distribution.

Training Ground

This track consists of workshops and classes to give your students hands-on experience learning the latest and greatest tools, tactics, techniques, and processes. We accept proposals for 1/2 day, full-day, and 2-day workshops.

Example Speaker Submission:

Submission Title:

Hacking Holograms: How to secure our security blankets

Author 1:

First Name: Jean-Luc
Last Name: Picardo
Organization: Concerned Citizen
Email: JLP@fakestemailhologram.com
Twitter Handle: @EMH2-FAKESUBMISSION
Phone Number: 212-555-4240
(Optional) Preferred Pronouns: Captain/My Captain/Sir

Bio:

Jean-Luc (aka Nacho Man Tandy SVG) is jack of many trades and master of none, well maybe just one: Hologram hacking. Jean has been doing security related things for nearly 10 years focusing on all things enterprise, from writing custom Nmap scripts, metasploit modules, BURP plugins, you name it he's done it. In the past 2 years he's taken a keen interest in the hologram security space and is aghast at what he's found. As is typical this over looked consumer (and military) space is rife with vulnerabilities and poorly understood threat models. Ever since Jean has taken it upon himself to raise awareness of the lack of security when it comes to holograms. In his spare time he enjoys 90's dubstep and home made beer.
Link to other talks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzcOqUXXywo
https://slides.com/bsidesto_hologramslol

Abstract:

The Galactic Federation estimates that 7.4 million emergency medical holograms will be installed on all space faring vessels by 2345. However, holograms are not only on Federation ships, they also exist in homes and around us as toys, companions, assistants and serve various roles in our daily lives. In this talk we will talk about our journey to secure intelligent holograms on a galactic level. This talk is designed to appeal to a spectrum of different audiences including hackers, developers, testers, consumers, manufacturers to understand the threats to their products and guide enterprises towards building security from the start.
This talk will cover the software stack, operating system, and supply chain security challenges, cyber attacks, as well as our strategy to mitigate threats from ground up. We will walk attendees through (via live demos) Hologram OS attacks, AI JVM decompilation, vulnerability hunting, and an example attack scenario, all using opensource tools developed by us or others in this space.

Detailed Description:

This talk has been developed over the past 2 years as a passion project of mine. Holograms aren’t going to go away, once the gates unlocked it was game over. The problem is, most of the companies making holograms aren’t keeping up with security best practices. through years of research we’ve identified multiple vulnerabilities in commercially available products used by millions of people. This talk will specifically cover reviewing the EMCORP Hologram version 2.781.9 released last year. Using opensource tools (listed below) that either I’ve written, or enhanced, or created by others. We’ll step through and explain how the holograms works from the bottom up including reviewing the Operating System (a Linux derivation), mapping the hologram on the network, how to decompile a hologram and what to look for from an attacker standpoint (SQLi, malformed input, etc) then we’ll cover how to write a module to turn a hologram in to an always on listening device that forwards any and all audio to an AWS bucket we browse live during the session to show the sounds our hologram, in our hotel room with the TV on, picked up and sent to our bucket.
Also, the demos will be live, but i’ll pre-record them before coming in incase anything goes wrong.
Tools:
– AI OS Exploit finder: https://github.com/faketool/AIOSEF
– nmap
– AI JVM Decompiler: https://gaggle.com/decompilation
– Python scripts (small and varied): https://gist.github.com/AISUCKS/
– Custom code (attached) – malicious always on listener
research links:
– White paper: https://whitepaper.com/AIOSVULNS.PDF
– Blog/Articles
– Hologram CIS Benchmarks: https://fakesite.com/HOLOCIS
– AppScan Hologram Plugin: https://blog.cybercompany.com/holo_appscan

Outline:

I intend to cover the following in the talk:
Intro – 5 Minutes
– Who we are
– How we got here
Holograms – 5 Minutes
– History of hologorams in starfleet
– Cyber issues in the news
– Evolution to todays market
Attacking Holograms – 25 Minutes
– The operating system
– LIVE DEMO – OS level attacks
– The software stack
– DEMO – Decompiling AI JVM using opensource
– DEMO – Finding obvious vulnerabilities
– LIVE DEMO – Example attack – Hologram always listens even when off
– Supply Chain attacks, how they work and examples
– Examples of JS repo’s being taken over
Protecting Holograms – 5 Minutes
– Mitigating OS level attacks (SE Linux discussion)
– Secure Code development using OWASP-AI
– Supply Chain Hardening/Trust
Review/Close/Thank You – 5 Minutes
– Conclusions
– Where people can find more information
– Thanks/Kudos to previous researchers
– Questions?

Special Requirements:

– Extra power available for hologram in the room
– Internet for live demos
– Ability to project slides

This Call for Papers closed on 2024-05-01 23:59 (America/Los_Angeles).