Security BSides Manchester 2016

Thank you all for coming to my talk at Security BSides Manchester 2016. The conference took place on Thursday 18th August 2016, at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School, in the heart of Manchester.

The title of my talk was: 

Accessing the personal details of most of the InfoSec professionals & the Responsible Disclosure process.

The talk was not recorded due to the sensitive nature of the content and not much information was given in the abstract. 

Electromagnetic Field 2016 - EMF Camp

Electromagnetic Field [1] is a UK camping festival for those with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things: hackers, artists, geeks, crafters, scientists, and engineers.

This year's badges were amazing! If you want to start hacking your badge, go to this link: https://badge.emfcamp.org/wiki/TiLDA_MK3

I actually had the opportunity to give a talk on the myths and truths when it comes to hacking airplanes. Thank you all for coming to my talk! The talk was recorded and streamed live at the same time. Soon, the video will be available on EMFcamp's youtube channel if you would like to watch.

This year the event took place between Fri 5th - Sun 7th Aug 2016. The organisers found a really nice location outside Guildford. It is an awesome camping site with power to your tent (if you remembered to bring an extension) and Internet access. Tickets are approximately £120 and if you are thinking of driving down, you need to purchase in advance a parking ticket. If you have a motor-home, you are also welcome. 

EMFcamp welcomes everyone, supports diversity and does not tolerate misconduct. So, pack your tent, some warm clothes, a couple bottles of/for water, a torch, your favourite drinks and you are all set. I suggest you get earplugs as well, especially if it is windy, you wont be able to sleep. 

Plenty of presentations to watch, a few canteens with drinks and food, and many different workshops. Many different villages [2] and a lot of fun stuff to do all day long! Except from attending interesting talks and workshops, from hacking stuff, making stuff, creating music through algorithms, practising your soldering skills, lock-picking, talking to people around the world through radio broadcast, and play fire ping pong, you can also enjoy the day with all sort of people, make new friends while have a a cold drink and warm food.

There is also a kids area as well where you can let them play from 10:00 am until 20:00 pm and overseen by professional carers. 

Pick your favourite activity as you go along or plan your day in advance by looking at the schedule on the website. 

You can follow EMF camp on twitter: @emfcamp 

[1] https://www.emfcamp.org
[2] map.emfcamp.org

0x Haxors - Deck of Playing Cards (hexadecimal)

Ever wanted a #geek version of a deck of playing cards based on the #hexadecimal numeral system (68 cards)? At last, a deck of playing cards based on the hexadecimal numeral system, also known as HEX. (meaning this is a custom-made deck that has 68 cards, not the 52 standard deck). ..check this Kickstarter project out!

Then you should check this out: 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gfragkos/0x-haxors-deck-of-playing-cards 

This project in order to be completed needs to place an order for a custom design (graphics included) and a custom cut for these cards. All existing playing-cards printing facilities (patterns) are made to print the normal 52 cards deck and in this case we need way more: 68 custom high quality prints and cuts. (special packaging for each deck is needed as well)

Thus, by backing this project you will help with the significant cost of placing a custom order for designing and printing this special set of cards. 
We are aiming to make the cards high quality in order to last longer when you play.

So, to summarise: 
Please note that making a deck or 68 cards, instead of the standard 52 cards, it means that even the packaging is custom-made and the cost involved is WAY HIGHER that simply changing the drawing on a standard 52 cards deck.

• Graphics (by a professional graphic designer). 
• High Quality print 
• Quality cards with clear plastic coating to last longer and fill nicer (than paper cards). 
• We want them to be water resistant as well. 
• Special Order to print 68 cards for each deck. 
• Packaging design and making to fit 68 cards. (packaging need to be custom made) 
• Staff costs to pack all these decks and ship them worldwide.

Please, help this project to become a reality!

SnoopCon 2016

I had the honour to be invited again this year by the Cyber Security Testing and Validation Team at British Telecoms (BT) in order to attend their annual internal conference, as a guest speaker. The conference is known as SnoopCon and it is BT’s Penetration Testing and Ethical Hacking annual meet-up event which lasts five days.

The event is held behind closed doors, however it is customary that on the third day they invite people from the industry, recognising that their work would be an invaluable input if presented at their internal conference.

It was a great opportunity for me to catch-up with so many friends at SnoopCon. I also find out that Anoop Sethi has decided to retire after approximately 12302 days uptime (33 years) for BT. 

It is a great honour to have known Anoop, the man who fundamentally changed the way Security and Penetration Testing is viewed in BT. Given the opportunity, I would like to personally wish Anoop all the best with anything he decides to do and I would like to thank him for being such an amazing individual.

I had a fantastic day at BT and the quality of the guest talks was over the roof. I am going to outline here briefly the content of the talks in the order they were presented. 

Invitation to the largest European Cyber Security Challenge

ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) is organising the European Cyber Security Challenge 2016 - the largest European challenge for cyber security talent. The Challenge will be held in November in Dusseldorf, Germany - and the Greek National Cyber Security team will compete with other national teams in various security-related challenges, such as web security, mobile security, crypto puzzles, reverse engineering, forensics.

The Greek team will be assembled in a qualifying round - in which we'd like to invite you to participate!

The qualifier will be held on Saturday, July 9 at the Department of Digital Systems of the University of Piraeus. The challenges will be similar to the ones outlined above, and the top 10 participants will comprise the Greek team that will travel to Germany. In order to be eligible, contestants need to legally reside in the country, be aged between 14-30, not have a Master's or higher degree or any professional experience in the information security sector - and of course have some InfoSec skills! Both competitions will be held in English, so contestants need to have at least basic understanding of the English language.

The Greek team is organised by TwelveSec and the Department of Digital Systems of the University of Piraeus, and supported by other major Greek universities and organisations, such as Security BSides Athens.

All you need to do to get the chance to compete in the qualifier is to register in the official website of the Greek team http://ecsc.gr/

Registrations are closing this week (Friday, July 1), so hurry up and register!