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Someone asked me yesterday "Why do INFILTRATE? Why did you even
start it?" And the answer was more complex than I could say at the
moment. Strategy always is, because narratives are linear and
strategy is by definition a complex tree of weighted possibilities.<br>
<br>
But I want to say a few things about it, now that INFILTRATE is a
thing that will clearly last. I have this byline coming out shortly,
one of the ones I consider important: a polemic against the DHS
deciding to indict the Iranians who hacked that dam in NY. I mention
this only because the people who came to INFILTRATE are those who
would vociferously agree with that position - a group
ill-represented by other conferences. <br>
<br>
In other words, INFILTRATE is the conference for people with one
foot on the "escalatory ladder" as <a
href="https://vimeo.com/161996596">Nate Fick's keynote</a> would
put it. That's not to say it's all Government contractors, although
certainly like any conference, there are some there. But your modern
mega-software-corp has a team on fuzzing bigger than most startups
these days. Hearing about how to turn all that fuzz-crash data into
actionable exploit primitives is boring to people who don't have the
right capabilities and mindset - which was exactly Sean Heelan's
talk. <br>
<br>
At some level, INFILTRATE was, of course, just about making a
conference that doesn't suck in all the ways other conferences can
suck - and the INFILTRATE crowd is noticeably older than that at
almost any conference I've been to other than, say S4, which is full
of industrial engineers. We like the music quieter so we can get
onto the business of talking about low level exploit engineering
with people we rarely see. :)<br>
<br>
And to bring us back to Badlock - conferences are at some level MITM
attacks on our industry. Why should we let a magazine company decide
what direction the conversation in our industry should go? (BlackHat
is owned by UBM) <br>
<br>
Anyways, <br>
-dave<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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