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Top 10 Things I Learn At Defcon 17

Some of you may remember my list from Shmoocon 2009, here’s the list for Defcon 17:
10. Defcon is one the largest computer security conference in the world with over 10,000 attendees this year (According to reports from Defcon staff).
[CORRECTION: Reports are coming in about the number of attendees at Defcon, and the RSA security conference. If anyone has a reliable source to get numbers from both conferences this year I would be interested. Thanks!]
9. “Hack Naked” shirts sell well at Defcon, pink “Hack Naked” shirts are a hit and we need to print more because we’ve only got 5 left in inventory. Another interesting factoid, the Defcon 7 t-shirt included a logo similar to the Hack Naked girl on our shirts.

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The “other” Hack Naked Girl

8. SSL is broken, in a variety of ways, not “panic now” broken, and not “do nothing about it” broken, but somewhere in between.
7. Getting a Mohawk just for Defcon is lame, except if it benefits a good organization like EFF.
6. Lock picking is a useful skill, and comes in handy when you need to open the doors between two of the hottest parties at Defcon, Security Weekly and 303 :)
5. There was no FAIL blog party…..FAIL!

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“Twitchy”

4. Chris Nickerson does not look “sexy” in a women’s tank top (click at your own risk!), or give good lap dances. Actually, none of the security podcasters looked “sexy” in the ladies tank top (gouging my eyes out now…).
3. There is no better group to host a party with than i-hacked heavsnt and surbo. DJ Great Scott, fog machine, laser line, t-shirt cannon. Nuf said. Special thanks to Tenable Network Security for sponsoring our party.
2. Going to the shooting range with Security Weekly listeners is fun, especially when it involved fully automatic weapons!

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The “Security Weekly Shoot”

1. Getting the entire Security Weekly crew together and going to Defcon to hang out with friends, hack, and talk security is totally awesome!

Paul Asadoorian

Paul Asadoorian is currently the Principal Security Evangelist for Eclypsium, focused on firmware and supply chain security awareness. Paul’s passion for firmware security extends back many years to the WRT54G hacking days and reverse engineering firmware on IoT devices for fun. Paul and his long-time podcast co-host Larry Pesce co-authored the book “WRTG54G Ultimate Hacking” in 2007, which fueled the firmware hacking fire even more.

Paul has worked in technology and information security for over 20 years, holding various security and engineering roles in a lottery company, university, ISP, independent penetration tester, and security product companies such as Tenable.
In 2005 Paul founded Security Weekly, a weekly podcast dedicated to hacking and information security. Paul grew Security Weekly into a network of security podcasts spanning multiple topics, such as application security and business. It has been estimated that Paul has conducted over 1,000 interviews with security professionals and hosted more than 1,000 podcast episodes in cybersecurity. In 2020 Security Weekly was acquired by the Cyberrisk Alliance.

Paul is still the host of one of the longest-running security podcasts, Paul’s Security Weekly, he enjoys coding in Python, telling everyone he uses Linux as his daily driver, poking at the supply chain, and reading about UEFI and other firmware-related technical topics.

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