[Linux-aus] Security conferences (was: LUGs)

[Adam Nielsen]

> There was one subject of real interest everywhere that is just not
> covered anywhere I can see online or at conferences. How did people
> crack Medibank etc. Where are the "here is what we did wrong"
> presentations? Based on the last couple of years, you could run a
> five day conference with eight confessions a day just using the cases
> mentioned in the media, not the hundreds where they paid the ransom
> and kept everything quiet.

There are a few conferences that cover this sort of thing.  The most
recent one would be AusCERT which was held in May at the Gold Coast:

  https://auscert.org.au/events/auscert2023-back-to-the-future/

> I would fly anywhere for a conference like that, even Hobart in
> Winter.

In that case you could try one of the larger US conferences, like DEF
CON (https://defcon.org/html/links/dc-faq/dc-faq.html) or Black Hat
(https://www.blackhat.com/upcoming.html) which are both on in August
(one after the other to cater for travellers), or HOPE
(https://xiv.hope.net/faq.html) which starts in a couple of weeks.

For anyone less keen on travelling, many of these types of conferences
put up their talks on YouTube so they are easily found.

> I guess most of it would not be relevant to Linux users as it would
> be Microsoft email automatically opening viruses or something similar.

Microsoft e-mail products automatically opening viruses hasn't really
been a thing for at least a decade now.  Most of this stuff is
ultimately caused by tricking people into downloading and running a
program that provides remote access to their computer and things go
from there.

A lot of Linux users are attracted by the freedom that open source
provides, and a lot of security conferences have similar ideals and use
open source tools, so there is usually quite a bit of overlap there.

Cheers,
Adam.