Opening Address - BSides Cape Town 2025

Thank you everyone.

>> Welcome to Bsides. [cheering] >> I must say it's really great seeing everyone here again. Um, old faces, new faces. Uh, some of you I basically see once in a year. Um, so while the talks are great, I think the community is for me one of the biggest parts of Bides as well. Um, so it's amazing for me how far we've grown. Um, this year as well, we've [snorts] added pro probably around 100 more than 100 um more people than last year. Um, I estimated we'll get around 580 people through the door this year. uh which plainly we wouldn't have been able to do that at our previous venues. Uh each venue has its quirks but um

yeah uh we wouldn't have been able to do this at the previous places uh purely because of size. Uh this venue has had some challenges. As you can see we're a bit far from the other tracks. Uh but we definitely think uh we have a lot more room to grow here. A lot of potential. Um yeah. So thank you for coming. Uh, I'll run through a few things. Uh, my I see my projections not working, but that should be fine. I don't have too many things. Uh, that's important on there. [snorts] Uh, just some logistics. Uh, make sure your cars and things are locked. We've had an incident or so um within the week uh where stuff got

stolen here. So, just make sure I mean we're still in South Africa. Um, just make sure your stuff is locked. Um, and then we we have a few other things. Um, make sure you have your access card or your tag with you. Uh, well, this because this is a hotel, uh, we're doing access control at the venues, so not in between, but when you enter the tracks and such, we're just going to make sure it's only the attendees and such that get in. So, just make sure you have your tag visible for the vaults. Um, and then in terms of the t-shirts, some of the people might not have gotten the right t-shirt size or

such. Um, that was just to make sure we have enough stock. uh you can swap out after 2 p.m. if there's left of that size at registration. Um then in terms of our schedule for today, uh you can see at the back of your badge there's a QR code that will take you to the pre-Talks page and that has all the details of the speakers and the schedule of all three tracks. You can also use the link there if you really don't want to use a QR code. Um then in terms of the uh t-shirts, you'll see that all the organizers in the vaults are wearing t-shirts. The organizers will have dark blue t-shirts and the vaults will have light blue. So

if you have any issues or trouble, grab a vault or an organizer and they should be able to sort you out. Um our lunch will be at 12:10 today. Uh and we will also as usual um have an after party after the closing. Um then in terms of our events for today, we have quite a few challenges besides the talks that's going on. We have a capture the flag challenge. This has already been running for quite a while. Uh the prize giving will be at the end of today and you need to be there to claim your prize. Uh if you are one of the top competitors, there will also be as usual a scavenger

hunt. Uh I have a example QR code on there displayed. Uh, that's not one of the codes. That's just an example. Um, and then there will also be NFC tags that you can scan with your phone. These are also part of the scavenger hunt challenge. Uh, this will close at 3 p.m. today. Uh, to enter, you can just scan one of the QR codes. They'll take you to the website. Uh, so you don't have to enter the code. It automatically takes you to the website to enter and register the code for the challenge. And then lastly, we have a AI challenge uh by goose. Um that's a LM uh jailbreak challenge. There's a cure code for that

and I believe we have some boards outside as well where you can also get the same links and stuff to to enter these challenges. Then for our CTF prizes, um, we have SS sponsored by Alter Security and Hack Defender. We've got six CS from Altered Security. Um, we have some hardware prizes, Raspberry Pies, Ardino Uno kits, we have some cool lockpicks, um, and quite a few other ch uh, quite a few other prizes as well. Uh so it's absolutely worth uh participating even if it's just for the prizes. [snorts] Um then in terms of talks we have three years three tracks again this uh this year. Um and as I mentioned the track the schedule's the back of your badge.

Um after this opening we will have a quick uh word from Dominic. Um and then after that we will have our keynote from uh Ch. And then after that we break into the three separate tracks. Uh I just want to give a a big thanks to our sponsors for today. Um they're ultimately what make this event possible. Uh especially at the price that it is. Uh I'm sure some of you have seen the cost of some of the corporate conventions. Um it's some of them are almost prohibitively expensive in in a personal capacity. We really try to make bides possible for for everyone. Um we try to keep our our costs as low as possible. We pretty much sell most if

not all of our student uh tickets at a significant loss. Uh so it's only really possible to to have it the way that we do um because of the sponsors. Then as well for our gold sponsors, Metrofiber um Offsec TriacMe Elastic, and NoForm. Uh, and we also have quite a few silver sponsors this year, uh, Snow, Infosac Advisory Bedrack Mobius MWR Theountry, Wy Labs, Think Canary, and Digital Shield. And then we also have a few other miscellaneous sponsors for bags, CTF um and the coffee and then um I'd say just enjoy the conference today. Um go watch some talks, meet some new friends. Uh it's not just the talks. The talks are very important but as I said the the

important part uh about Bides is the community. Um just find one person you haven't talked to before. strike up a conversation. I mean, we have all we most of us here have the same interest group. Uh you have a lot of a lot to talk about uh even if you don't know it yet. So, just start and go chat to someone even if that's just the one thing you do today. But yeah, otherwise enjoy the conference.

Um I'll then hand over to Dominic.

Hello. >> Thank you. Merry Christmas. Uh, wow. Good morning, everyone. And thank you so much, Bides, for letting me delay the entire thing for for no good reason. Um, so I'm pretty excited. It's finally here. Besides day. Uh and we because we're sponsors, we get to see the sort of stress sweat on the organizers uh in the days in the buildup to this. Uh and what's interesting about Bides is the organizers are entirely volunteer-based. Uh they don't get paid a salary. I mean, do you even know who most of the organizers are? It's not like they're getting famous from this whole thing. So they they kill themselves. They put in all of this work just to make an amazing

community conference for all of you. And I think that's incredibly admirable. So, can we make like a rockous round of applause? [applause and cheering]

>> [applause] >> Um, and if any of you have ever done something you're really proud of and then like walked out into the world and no one said anything, um, please just if you see an organizer or a volunteer, just say thanks. Say, "This was cool. This was special." Send them a message on whatever social media network is your favorite one these days, something like that, just to let them know thank you. Um and then I think importantly thanks to everyone for attending. It would be a weird conference if there was no one to watch the watch the talks. Uh and what's kind of amazing is the community vibe that uh that forms around this. I think

when you go to corporaty conferences, it's you know people are in suits and they're making business deals or something like this. Everyone's here. They're giving up a Saturday for the community, for the vibe to teach and learn from each other. Um, which is also really special. And then you make it special by continuing that. So the more friends you make, I mean, I don't know about you, when I'm at a bri and people want to talk about politics or the rugby or something like can we talk about hacking? Uh, finally you're at a place where you can talk about hacking. So just walk up to people, make friends. This is a great time and place to to do

that. And like Isak was saying, if you walk making this, if you walk away having made the community stronger by engaging with people, that's wonderful. There's every type, every person here. People who've been doing it for years, people who just started last month, people who want to get into it, people on the blue team, people on the red team, people in compliance. There's no there's nobody here that doesn't have some level of experience shared with you um that you can learn from. And then huge thanks to the speakers. I mean, I think some speakers over here, uh, anyone who's ever put a talk together knows it's lots of hours in your own head trying to see if something will

work. Is this going to be worthwhile for people? Uh, and then you eventually have to stand on a stage and find out how much of that's true. Uh, so it can be it can be very difficult. So big thank you to all the speakers for like South Africans engaging in security research to share with people is is really what we want more of so that we aren't so dependent on our security entertainment from the US or the northern hemisphere people. The more and energy and uh interesting stuff that we're doing here, the more self-fulfilling it becomes. It creates a little bit of a a steamroller effect. to the speakers. Please use this as like the low point of your career so that you

go on to even bigger and better things like we really want to see more South Africans on the international stage with things like besides having been a launchpad for that. Uh you are worthy. You are doing good stuff. Um you need to do the work. You've already done the work. Take it further. Uh okay. So, as sponsors, uh, you're known for throwing money at a problem. Uh, [laughter] that's that's great. Thank you. Uh, so just a brief thing, like it's really important to us that we show up in the way that I'm asking you to show up. Uh, really happy we got five of our speakers accepted um, accepted today. So, uh, if you get a chance,

please go see an Orange Cyber Defense talk and, uh, and say thanks to those speakers. There, I did my sponsor thing. That's okay. Right. All right. It's >> not just because we sponsor Yeah, it's not just because we, you know, we only sponsored after you after they accepted the tour. That sounds worse, Rogan. Anyway, I hope you have an incredible bid and uh thank you everybody. [applause]