Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to Protect it all, where Aaron Crowe expands the conversation beyond just OT delving into the interconnected worlds of IT and OT cybersecurity.
Get ready for essential strategies and insights.
Here's your host, Aaron Crowe.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: What's up, everyone? Just back from Black Hat and defcon.
This is the organization what. First year I've been, and, I don't know, probably 15 years where I didn't actually go on the floor at Black Hat, and I did not stay for all of defcon. Both things are pretty. Pretty rare for me here recently. Just too much stuff going on, but I definitely wanted to make sure that I dipped my toe in both of those.
Had a great experience this week.
Trying to stay cool, not too hot. Melting into the pavement.
We all know in. In Vegas in the summertime, it. It's always. It's always warm and hot. So Vegas in August, Black Hat, defcon. Thousands of people.
You know, let's talk about what went down, what stood out, and. And what's next. Lots of things coming on. Really excited about my buddies that are doing ResetCon this year. I'm actually going to replay a episode from last year about that, so check out that. So just back from. Back from Vegas. Um, first impressions. You know, it's still the same energy. Um, still quite a few people there. Lots of vendors spending a lot of money, lots of AI conversations talking about AI, how AI can be impactful, how it. They're bolting it on.
Had had some conversations with some vendors that are kind of frustrated because, you know, hey, we've had. We've had AI in our product for, you know, 10, 15 years, but nobody knows it, right? And they. They're. They're struggling to say, how do we add that value now or so show it without just looking like we're slapping an AI sticker on. Like, it seems and appears like many vendors are on the. On the Vegas side, man, I just.
I hate to say it, but I am not a Vegas fan. It is so hot.
It has gotten super expensive.
You can't stay anywhere. Food, I mean, ordering a freaking coffee and a. And a. And a bagel, I mean, is 20 bucks. It's. It's so ridiculously expensive.
And then talking with cab drivers and Uber drivers and all the things. Everybody's struggling.
It's definitely. The crowds are down.
It's not a. It's not a good sign for. For Vegas. They say that, you know, a lot of folks are not coming from overseas. A lot of people aren't. Aren't traveling there this Summer, it's, it's, it's, it's struggling, but I'll say that the people that are there. There was still a great turnout for Black Hat. There was an amazing turnout for defcon.
And the community is still, still incredible. I saw so many friends and, and, and folks there.
Every hall's a conversation. You know, it's hard to walk 10ft without seeing someone, you know, having a.
And saying hi, giving a hug, high five.
Seeing people at drinks or dinner or whatever the things are. Even just trying to, you know, run to the bathroom. I mean, you. It's hard to. It's hard to get around in that space without seeing people that you know, which is awesome.
You know, defcon, I mean, set up the day before it actually opened with ICS Village, and we walk in at 10am Something like that. And I don't know how many people. There were thousands of people literally waiting in line to get swag. They wanted to buy DEFCON shirts, which is awesome. I don't get it.
But man, I'm glad that they're super excited about it. So that's what keeps these, these conferences and these, these events going. And that's the kind of energy that we need, you know, to make the next steps and to make, make, make changes and, and, and grow and, and all the things that, you know, the purpose of, of conferences, especially like defcon, is to grow. It's to hack, it's to learn, it's to play with technology. It's to, you know, connect with friends and others and, and the things. So it's, it's a lot of fun. So spent a lot of my time in the beginning at House of Blues. We had the Cyber Lounge there. Awesome venue right there in Mandalay Bay. You know, one of the best networking spots of the week. I saw so many people coming and going. Old friends and new conversations. Had the OT wall there showed off, you know, technology of, of what a simple OT environment looks like. I think I've shown that picture on here, but definitely check out my LinkedIn post.
I've got pictures of it out there. It's actually got to get repaired because TSA loves to just it. They love to just pry the tops off because there's electronics in. I'm sure on a X ray scanner probably looks like a. Something that's dangerous on an airplane. I don't want to say the word, but yeah, I mean, I get it. But they continue to break it, so we just got to continue to fix it.
Cool thing is, is, is most of those Conversations were about what we're working on, struggles that we're having, fun times, all the things had a lot of folks that are talking about, you know, struggling in getting the next steps or, you know, whether it's OT cyber security or maybe there were quite a few that were getting into not, not necess necessarily getting into OT cyber, but a lot of their customers were, or their, their organization was getting, you know, really opening that OT cyber security door, which was awesome to see.
Obviously everyone's talking about AI and how, how it can impact them.
I would not want to have this conversation without mentioning all of the villages and all the spaces. Obviously I have a few that are close to me being ICS village. It's one I spend most of my time at.
Tom Van Norman and br folks, the volunteers, everybody that's, you know, the sponsors, everybody that comes out there, this was the biggest event ever. The space was amazing. It was huge.
So much things going on, maritime and red, red teaming and all the different villages were there. It's amazing to see how this thing has grown and how many people come out to see this and ask amazing questions and want to be part of the CTFs and they want to, you know, dig into what's going on, why OT is different. Even the ones that frustrate me when every year I seem to have the arguments, the arguments with people that come up to me, try to convince me that there's no difference between IT and otu, there's no difference between technology and a power plant or a manufacturing facility, then the same as that's in their house or whatever, right? And sometimes the technology is the same. But you know, I continue to have the, the understanding from working in, in the field and understanding what's different about it. And sometimes it's a hard explanation to understand. As a cyber and technologist, it's hard to understand why you would want Windows XP running in your environment. And it's never that we necessarily want that, it's just that it's there and sometimes it's easier or almost impossible to, to. To get it out. So Def God crowd and energy, man, it was packed. I don't know how many were there. Talked to some of the goons on Thursday night, Friday, I don't remember which it was. And, and they were, they were just talking about how, you know, it's more of the same lot. So many people, they, those, those goons guys, if you've never been to defcon, the, the volunteers for defcon are called goons.
They're wearing the red Shirts. They're. They stand there all day long. They're walking hundreds and thousands of steps. It's a. It's incredible how much effort and work they do. And they're volunteers, guys right there, just like me and everybody else at the ICS Village. We're volunteers. We don't get paid for that, right? We're. We're there to volunteer, to help, to give our time. And those, Those DEFCON goons, man, they are just overwhelmed. There's so many people there, so be nice, be kind, ask my amazing questions, buy him a drink, get him a popcorn, get them a candy bar.
Those guys and gals and folks really, really work hard to make sure that everybody has a fun time, is safe, and, you know, can. Can we can continue having these types of events? So DEFCON has, you know, everything from students to seasoned hackers, people that have nothing to do with cybersecurity, that just want to come out and hang because it's cool, it's fun. There's amazing villages and contests and weird projects, and there's. There's hidden games and, and codes everywhere. I remember one of the first years being there, I was sitting at a talk, and literally in the seat next to me, there was a business card. And I looked at the business card, and long story short, it ended up becoming a.
A puzzle, right? You had to figure out the puzzle. And if you figured it out in time, then. Then you got to this place and it was just a door in a hotel room and it was just a party, right? It was just. But me and, and a few folks, like, we spent hours on that thing, figured out because, you know, step one would take you to this place, and you go to this other place like it. It was. It was a lot of fun. So somebody put a lot of time, things are all over the place. So it's. You get out of it what you put into it.
But, you know, going back to just the bigger conference, looking at black hat, many of the big conferences still ex. The issues in the big conferences still exist. It's one of the reasons why we do, you know, with this Lone Star Cyber. If you're, if you're seeing my hat, I've got my Lone Star shootout hat on.
You know, my daughter loves socks. So anytime I go to a conference, which I did this year, as far as going in, you know, I want to get T shirt or a pair of socks or, or whatever. But then you get bombarded with the, the sales, outreach, and, hey, you came to our booth and you seem to be interested in this, and you can't seem to be interested in that. And unfortunately, most of the folks at those booths are just working there. They don't necessarily understand and they're not actually asking. They're not getting the quote, unquote, icp, the understanding of who the ideal customer is. And if I'm interested, they're not asking this question. So usually when I go up to these booths, I'm like, look, I am or am not interested in your product. I really just want a pair of those socks. If that's okay, I'll grab a pair. If not, no harm, no foul, right? And most of them don't really care. They're there to give out their stuff. They don't want to go home with it. Right. Because I've been in the vendor space and you don't want to take that stuff back on the airplane with you. So you just want it to all be gone when you leave.
Because Black Hat has gotten so big and like that, there's a lot of decision makers that don't go.
I know when I was an asset owner, I never had the budget to go. Not never, but rarely I would have the budget to go. I think I went twice as an asset owner to Black Hat. One time I went for a day and then ended up having to get called out because an issue happened at a plant.
And then I tried to get back. I don't remember if I was able to or not, but it's really hard to get the budget. I know I was speaking with one. One of my friends that had. Was even speaking at defcon and had gotten his. The company had turned down his approval to travel, so he had to pay for it out of his pocket.
Which is it. It's frustrating, right? Is. Is they don't necessarily see. And what that tells me is they don't necessarily see the value in the conference for them.
What is the roi? You know, why would they invest money in their. In their people to go to this thing when it seems like they just see it as a party or a, you know, sales organization or whatever. Right. So you know that that's a struggle when you have the ROI being questioned by organizations and why they wouldn't send it, why the CISOs don't go.
Or if they do, many times you don't see CISO on their name because they don't want to get bombarded. It's one of the reasons why I work. You know, we're doing what we do as well as why I work with organizations, and I Advise with like building Cyber Security and ResetCon. So ResetCon's one that's coming up in October.
Savannah, Georgia. You know, ResetCon is focused. It's more, I would say it's more like DEFCON than Black Hat in that it's focused on cutting edge research, exploitation, tradecraft, things like that in critical industry.
You know, it's like DEFCON meets university research meets critical infrastructure. So it's really focused, it's really niche.
It's the second year, last year went amazing venue, amazing city, amazing talks and conversations.
It's not huge, it's very curated and niche but you know, really great feedback last year had a lot of great conversations, a lot of great, a great talk. So highly recommend checking them out.
Really working to get a lot of the villages out there and I think the prime sponsor this year is Amazon. So there's definitely some, some big value being seen in this space.
You know, we'll be playing the replay episode from that Reset Con with, with the founders from it last year.
But you know, really, really check that out. If you're OT or it or somewhere in between you're wanting to get in, you're in that research conversation, anything like that, definitely check out that episode on ResetCon. I think it's episode 18 talking about Reset Con. So if you were a Black Hat or defcon, you know, love to hear your side of the story. How, how did it go? What was your favorite thing?
What, what did you like? What did you not like?
If you're, if you're going to resetcon, definitely let me know. Reach out to myself. If you don't haven't heard about it or you want more details.
They may still have talks open. I don't know, it's pretty late.
But there's definitely some opportunities for folks to volunteer and, or you know, just come and be part of it. Right? It's, it's a great location, it's a great venue, it's lots of great conversations. So you know, definitely there's not a whole bunch of bad scanning and, and salesy type stuff. It's very much more villages and conversations and deep dives with Lone Star. We are doing some Austin local events here coming up. If you're in Austin, Texas area, we've got a couple of happy hours and, and a dinner coming up with the big event coming in November where we're doing the next Lone Star Cyber Shootout where it is a two one and a half day event where we start out with cyber dinner and then the next morning we do, you know, shooting where you shoot guns out of helicopters. This year we're going to do some cool stuff talking with our, with our helicopter person.
We are going to be shooting out of the helicopter at Humvees as the Humvees are moving and we'll be shooting paintballs. We're not going to be hurting anyone but it'll be a lot of fun. So shotguns, pistols, great dinner, bourbon, cigars, Texas skyline after it's cooled down quite a bit. So definitely one to check out. Details will be coming up in the next week. So definitely please reach out for that. And reach out.
You'll have a good one. And until I see you guys at the next next conference, thanks a lot.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us on Protect it all where we explore the crossroads of IT and OT cyber security.
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