BSidesNYC 0x03 interview with Dave Giancaspro

hello Dave thank you so much for joining me thank you for having me pretty how are things going in the conference so far very well really it's been great it it um we've had over 700 people uhuh and everybody seems to be having a great time it absolutely definitely a success I can see that the atrium is full the Halls are jam-packed a lot of our speakers told that their rooms were all full and they were getting a lot of Engagement so all positive signs everywhere and you were instrumental for this success along with Huxley you were in charge of creating this content coming up with all of the right talks for this conference so can you talk us

uh talk us through the process of cfp and what it would take to submit a talk here and come present so the cfp we started by going through we we read through the abstracts and what we're looking for is an abstract that's going to give us a good idea of what the Talk's going to be about we are looking for talks that really try to find as many talks as possible so that they cover the entire spectrum of everything that's part of this cyber security field so we're looking for people who are doing NW working we're looking for people who are doing um forensics red teaming all of that becomes sort of what we want and we want to make sure we're

we're covering things that work for the spectrum of people so we have people here today first con yes never been to one before and they are just over the moon wonderful they they I'm like okay okay you know there were more bsides and check them out I met a gentleman uh on the elevator and he said he is loving this and they will be back again next year and we are definitely going to be back next year that is our goal wonderful is to be back and we're GNA need more talks and how we're gonna based on how everything went we're going to look for uh maybe see have more space to have extra talks

because they just went so well and we had talks that worked for first ERS and for veterans yes and that was one of the things we also wanted to cover yeah and that's a Herculean task right you're trying to make sure that the talks cater to a variety of audience different backgrounds different levels exactly we had one talk uh the FBI Citizen Academy now that's not a talk that most people you know it's more for new people but we saw that talk and said we're gonna have a lot of students we're gonna have a lot of people just graduating this is something that may be interested it absolutely and a few of the people I spoke to said they really

enjoyed that talk we also had we had an interesting one about can bus okay for aeh vehicle hacking given by a fireman wow and he was talking about some of these ideas that could possibly help in situations where maybe getting the doors open instead of them having to use heavy tools or jaws of life to rip people out of cars if it's possible to pop the ca car open with can bus do all these other ideas and I thought that's a talk that would be great for some student to say that's my thesis that's what I'm going to I'm write a thesis about this I have some ideas uh I'm going to learn about cus

and we're going to have something that's practical that people that may save lives yeah in addition to it being a thesis the angle and the way that person came up with this talk for a security conference being a fireman yeah that path itself is not something that's common and that's a very unique story to tell yes that's wonderful so thank you so much for sharing uh the typical process and also giving us a little bit of an insight into the difficulties and the pain that you had to go through to pick the right talks and you know sometimes send out rejections for really good talks yes we did have that was painful I understand it is so painful because there are so

many people that and one of the things was right now like I'll give good example would be AI right chap GPT is such a big deal now s parking wrote an episode with it and we had a lot of talks about that but we had to figure out okay which ones are we going to keep um it's the same with blockchain and um cryptocurrency and we actually have some people here from the um from legal aid okay they're they work the forensics for legal aid I see okay and they were actually at one of the talks that the person I was speaking to was fascinating by it it was how to you how Bitcoin was

being used to backtrack and find out who the um the attackers were after paying ransomware okay and that actually turns out to be something he said recently happened in a case a Cory case where they're try to figure out okay how did they use this guy paid in Bitcoin thought he was Anonymous he wasn't okay interesting very interesting talk ideas here and looks like you had a blast selecting the talks I did what is the most important thing that you've learned today was there something that caught your eye uh not just from a talk perspective but even just from talking to people at conferences today I'll tell you the thing about conferences just you're always the

number of the types of people let's let's put it that way it's so great to see the different Spectrum across the board of the people who are in this community the people who contribute to this community and really gives us a diverse perspective of everything and I just find it you know I just find it amazing just hearing their stories you get a bunch of it people together and we start trading War Stories and there's a certain um you sort of have that certain i g to say you commiserate but laugh about it go I'm not alone yeah yeah yeah wait wait they said their admin password to password I had that happen three years ago I almost killed

somebody for it you know that kind of feeling happens a lot and it's great it's that's wonderful thank you for sharing that and I know pulling off such a conference at this scale is not easy a lot of Blood spreed and Tears would have gone behind this but why are you doing this giving back to the community okay um there's a guy who wrote a paper many years ago the cathedral in the bizaar okay he was his name was Eric ramond and it's all about open source but he was also he published The Hacker dictionary he did a whole bunch of things okay and one of the things he talked about this culture was it's what they call it

giving culture it's not a culture where you gain respect by getting and and keeping wealth it's by giving it away give out the information and being able to put a forum together like that that helps people do that it's just it's great you just feel great that you you were able to contribute to that today uh one of our vendors had a lockpicking contest and I caught a picture of one of our attendees not one of our speakers not anybody just a guy came to the conference teaching a kid how to pick locks fun and that is the spirit yes of besides right there was was when I saw that said that's what we do this fall

wonderful and in the spirit of you giving to the community by organizing this conference what would you like the community to do for besides NYC specifically how do you think they can enrich this conference further what do you think somebody somebody who's you know looking at this video what do you think they should do to make this happen next year at a largest scale subit talks volunteer um find something that nobody else is doing okay and part of that that is there are so many people who are working in these little niche and like I talked about before yes they think they're alone and they're not yeah they're not alone and you you may find

people to go to collaborate with you may find so many people interested in your ideas and that's the other thing the people in this community are very eclectic yeah yeah you you you start to find that you know they do this oh and they also Brew their own beer every questions about that or they you know they're they love to cook just like I said it's just an amazing um and open group of people absolutely that's that's great to hear and for somebody attending besides NYC how do they make the best use of their time find the talks you want to go to and network meet people talk to people everybody's out there they're open the

CTF the capture the flag is great uh great way don't worry about being great at it don't worry you know if you only catch a few Flags if you only do a few few it doesn't matter there's just so much fun in it it's about showing up really and trying it yeah absolutely try it there it's a safe space just go ahead and and try it and people will help I've I've been I've done um capture the flags at um derbycon okay and you know people just start helping each other even if they're not on the same team because it's fun it's fun yeah yeah it's just all about the fun and there's prize money but nobody ever

takes the prize money we just give it to hackers for charity uhuh right but it's all about just getting together and doing that one thing that you enjoy wonderful wonderful and I know at this EUR Biz NYC we had Villages um some we had some talks in the villages we had ctfs uh we had workshops we had a lot of interesting talks are you in a position to give us any spoilers for what's coming up next year any new thing nothing yet all right that I like expect expect the same expect the same expect the same if not better yes perfect we're always looking for to have a few things the one thing if if I if you ask me what's the

one thing that disappointed me I could actually tell you that we didn't get the lockpicking village oh okay and and that's always we've had it for the past few years but for some reason the group we worked with just was having some trouble getting organized okay and that's hopefully next year we're gonna get the we make they that's always packed people love the lockpicking village wonderful thank you so much for talking to me about all of this and thank you so much for all the effort that you put in here and for growing this community I I really want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk this is great it's going to get more people here next year

absolutely wonderful thank you so much thank you pretty