Blackhat 2 Day Recap [Bettalatethaneva]

It was another cold, long drive into Washington DC from Aberdeen, MD. The hour and a half commute was definitely wearing on us. We had to leave Joe's house by 6:15am to get to the 8am registration on time. Something had to give...it was as if Law could read my mind. He looked at me, "Hey Ant, we have to have a Starbuck's coffee on the way in today." "Your right", I mused. He punched STARBUCKS into the Garmin GPS in Joe's car without waiting for affirmation from me. "Eight miles" the cold electronic voice said. "DAMN" was the response in unison. We went ahead and hit the nearest highway on our way to DC and lo and behold...a sign for Starbucks at the next truck stop 1.5 miles up the highway. It had to be done, bless Joe's heart but he had violated our Seattle coffee sensibilities when we asked him to stop for coffee earlier in the week and he stopped at Burger King. Yes my dear readers, Burger King. Being a Seattle native born and bred I can only do that once a lifetime.

After walking out of Starbucks cup in hand, there was a look in each mans eye, a pep in his step, for lack of better terms we had ENERGY! On to the Blackhat Tales.
Day One

We registered, claimed our badges and bags and immediately went schwag hunt...er I mean talked to some of the vendors including Paraben, SAINT and Sunbelt Software. We missed most of the introduction and most of the keynote address. We also bumped into Chris Gates from LSO and Brian Wilson and hung out with them most of the day including lunch.

We attended the following talks:

Cracking GSM

RFIDI0ts!!!--Practical RFID Hacking

Bad Sushi: Beating Phishers at their Own Game

Oracle Hacking

Scanning Applications 2.0

We grabbed a quick bite to eat and chatted with Steve Adegbite of Microsoft (always a pleasure!) before we had to leave to do the 1.5 hour commute (sigh)
Day Two

We slept in till noon and decided that a 1.5 hour commute both ways just wasn't going to happen. Instead we packed our suitcases and jumpbags, went bar hopping, shopped at WalMart, and had dinner at a Chinese Buffet. (not necessarily in that order)


All in all it was pretty cool, the talks were a step up from Shmoocon overall and the atmosphere is nice (they also have Starbucks drip coffee going for them). Its much smaller than BH USA Las Vegas which was a great time last year. I think that next year I might just do Shmoo and then Defcon/BH Vegas in the summer.