BSIDES RDU 2022 Overview

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hey ashley can you tell me a little bit more about this cyber security community here in the raleigh durham area yeah so raleigh durham chapel hill we've been growing rapidly from major businesses like the big tech companies amazon and cisco and red hats of the world down to startups we are the research triangle so there's a lot of great activity happening with you know the security community within the security community and a lot of companies hiring in this area for security professionals so ashley are there companies hiring in the area and can they go to b size rally or business rdu and recruit people from there absolutely um our community is full of you know security professionals security

enthusiasts from you know very beginners to expert level people within our community it's a great resource for those people as well as those that are looking to recruit for their own companies so actually this year besides rdu is also at the carolina theater in durham so can you tell me a little bit more about the venue and why we picked it yes so the carolina theater of durham is a really awesome historic building that has been in downtown durham since 1926. it's in the epicenter of all the most awesome things that happen in durham if you're coming in for the weekend it's a great area to be in there's a lot of nightlife a lot of things to do you're

also very close to some of the greatest hiking in the area raleigh isn't too far chapel hill isn't too far so it's a great venue for us also it's a very beautiful building that we just really enjoy being there it also holds up to about a thousand people

all right omar so it's actually really awesome to sit here and talk with you i know we have a good relationship going back part of that is because you've been dedicated to besides rdu for a long time in fact i believe there's a wonderful story on how it got started so i think we'd love to hear about that yeah absolutely so i'm long story short that was nine years ago so i was younger we were all younger and we were at an another conference that was local here in in raleigh a while back or carolinacon now since then they actually have moved to charlotte but we also have carolina kakalakicon which is another conference that we have local but

the the longer story short is that you know visa started in las vegas and then whenever they started i collaborated with a few folks that organized a conference and during carolinacon i was talking to my friends probably over a few drinks and say how come you know this place has a b size and we don't have a b size how come this other place has a business and we don't have a b size and then i just asked everybody there who wants to make a b size with me and i started seeing hands being raised and i went like okay that's getting real so i kind of sober up a little bit and then i started actually talking to a

lot of folks in here from jj he has been instrumental throughout the year supporting the the team and we extended the team you know significantly now fast forward all these years you guys actually have taken it to the next level you have a non-profit organization you have tons of sponsors you have tons of activities from ctfs to workshops to break up sessions you know big names in the industry have supported us you know from day one and everything so it's an amazing community an amazing venue and it's like right in the center of these three different cities you know raleigh durham and chapel hill which is making it super convenient and and super proud of what the team actually

has done with the idea and looking forward to the many years to come

so ashley you have been instrumental to the besides rdu community but can you tell me a little bit on how b sites or why besides is important to you sure so um before i got into security i was always really interested in get you know really the the community and getting more involved and a friend of mine and charlotte mentioned that they were going to besides augusta and that was several years ago now and i decided that i would go to besides augusta as well and i had a really amazing time i learned so much about security um all the different genres of security additionally um it just made me even more passionate about security and about learning

i got to meet so many great people i was able to network i met with people from all over the place i loved it so much that i decided that i was going to try to go to every b-sides event that i could partly because b-sides is one of the most economically feasible conferences when it comes to what you get for what you pay for these are non-profit organizations that are really focused on the community and because it's focused on the community there's more of a community atmosphere at these conferences than some of say like the bigger ones where there's thousands and thousands and thousands of people so i made it a habit to try to get to

every b sides that i could get to at that point in time it was before i was in security um so i was driving and volunteering and as many as i could networking with as many people as i could and going you know as far north as you know virginia or excuse me washington dc and down all the way to georgia and then over to um you know charlotte and and west of our area so i learned a ton i realized the amount of resources that were available at b-sides conferences and it just really it it meant something to me and it's really helped me in my career it's helped me to learn as basically help me figure out what i

wanted to do and ultimately it's time to give back and so i i wanted to do more than just you know go to the different conferences i wanted to help actually with the one that was in my area so that's how i got into besides rdu

what type of content an attendee can expect from besides rdu this year the great question well first off we always have really great speakers these are people that are experts in their field and they they're diverse so they go in skill level and also subject matter so we'll see you know we haven't chosen our speakers yet this year the cfp just closed and so we're going to be going going into the voting session soon but the content is top-notch at most b-sides events including b-sides rdu the other things that we have going on we have a wonderful lockpick village that is put on by oak city lock sport we have a lot of community sponsors that

will be out here different organizations for you to network with we have um dc 919 there's people from issa there oak city lock sports 2600 so there's a lot of different groups that that find their way to our two b-sides rdu so there's plenty of people to network with additionally we also have a ctf that's put on by eversec they've been running our ctf for many years now they have recently the last couple years they've moved to a hybrid model and we're going to have a hybrid model this year they they will have a hybrid model this year so that you can either be on premise and do the ctf or be in the virtual

space and still be able to compete this year we also have a workshop that's putting on that's put on by ben demick it's called software spelunking 101 and it the idea is to help beginners that are interested in getting into reverse engineering answer some of the questions related to that and then ben and his team plan to go through some of the different scenarios for reverse engineering and to help people really understand what it is and how to get into it and some of the questions that they should be asking when they're looking to become a reverse engineer expert [Music] so actually i heard that besides rdu is free but are there tickets and how do i

get one do they actually get sold out pretty quickly yes actually um so besides rdu is free there are some reasons behind that and part of it is that we don't want to add additional fees to our users or our attendees i should say so it is free however what helps the conference run is we do sell t-shirts and we have sponsorships and this year we also plan to have limited edition limited edition items for sale that we will announce shortly so we plan to open the ticket registration soon we are waiting for a couple different confirmations so that we can make sure that things are right and then we'll be posting those updates on our twitter

linkedin and facebook pages additionally um there's also a donate option for this year as well if you're interested and maybe you don't want a t-shirt but you're willing to help put in a donation to help pay for the venue and other things that we have going on there is that option as well

i heard that there's an after party about you know after besides so okay tell me a little bit more about that of course you want to know omar so um yeah this year's after party is going to be held at pony soros brewing company which is in downtown durham it's not too far from the theater it's going to be a really fun time there's going to be drink and food as well to register for that after party you can do that at the same time when you register for your tickets you can also register for the workshop at that time as well