IUPUI-March 18th- Bsides Indy kicked off its 2018 Hackathon with speakers and workshops on network and IoT security. While speakers addressed topics from phishing to social engineering, others ran workshops in networking and IoT hacking. Saturday included more talks and a Hacker Village with a variety of activities including wearable IoT, capture the flag (CTF), robotics, and lockpicking. SPICE was proud to sponsor the event.
Bsides Indy is a local part of the Bsides community which gathers people together in the spirit of collaboration to have events that are both informative with speakers and hands on with workshops and villages. Held across the country, Bsides events bring together experts and non-experts in the hopes of improving the community through interaction, and having the conversations for the “next big things” that are going to happen.
Instructors spent Friday teaching classes in practical network signature development for open source IDS, open-source intelligence, and intro to IoT hacking. In the introduction to IoT hacking students spent their time installing and then using tools on an Raspberry Pi to attack lightbulbs. Meanwhile a range of speakers gave talks on a wide range of security topics.
When asked, one attendee mentioned how much he enjoyed coming to Bsides events. “I love to get to a few of these every year. They are a great time and a gathering of geeks, business, hackers, and makers,” he said, pointing out all the bags with Ham radios hanging from them as well as the makers working on youth robotics, lock picking, and teaching soldering wearable electronics.
Bsides Indy 2018 organizer Frank Diaz brought together a wide range of sponsors including academia (SPICE), business (Salesforce, RevICS Security, Sans Penetration Testing, Trusted Sec, Cyber Ark), and maker/hacker groups (Bloomington Fools). Asked why he hosts Bsides events, Frank says,
BSidesIndy is a way to give back to the community that has done so much for us. Our team gets a chance to help people make social and professional connections, share knowledge, and have a great time doing it. It’s a lot of work but the reward is tangible when people come up and let us know how we’ve directly impacted lives and careers.
SPICE’s goals of research, education, and outreach are strongly supported by events like Bsides Indy 2018. Our partnership intends to not only improve the security of today’s systems, people, and networks but it also looks to build a more security minded future body of students, educators, and designers, all dedicated to making our future from time of design all the way through to end of life.
A full list of videos from the speakers can be found at Iron Geek’s website.