Hey everyone! I’ve been remiss over the past month – a little over a month, actually – in updating this blog. It’s not that I didn’t want to; I just had a ridiculous travel schedule. I was out for 12 days, back home for four days, then in Huntsville for an amazing week, back home for one day, then up to Vegas for Black Hat and DEF CON.
I’ve got quite a few things to talk about from Black Hat and DEF CON that I’ll be putting out in posts over the next few days and weeks, but I’ll start off by saying that as always, Hacker Summer Camp (Black Hat and DEF CON) was fantastic. Always a great time! There are several friends that I unfortunately usually only see once a year there in Las Vegas, so I always have a great time.
Black Hat’s LEGO Chill Out Area
Black Hat did something very cool this year – they had a LEGO chill out area where you could sit and (as they called it) “picks and bricks.” You could sit there and either pick locks or put together LEGO towers. They were doing a couple of raffles a day for these insane prizes. I’ll post a picture here, but basically it’s a custom LEGO set of the Black Hat stage with little people. What’s insane is that the stage actually has a real LCD screen hooked up to 4GB of memory! I’m like, “OMG, I can have a little LEGO minifigure up on the stage and then actually put my talks on the screen!” So I absolutely had to win that thing.
I spent quite a bit of time on day one and especially day two hanging out there, building some LEGO towers in between obligations, picking locks for a bit, and earning raffle tickets so I could enter the drawings. Finally, in one of the drawings, I won the LEGO set! I cannot wait to put that thing together.
Really though, talking to the other people there while working on the towers, it was just a lot of people discussing what a great idea it was to have a place to chill out and hang out – you know, after you’re talking to a lot of sales people and dealing with all that, it’s nice to just go decompress.
After I won, I went and talked to the head guy who put it together. He said each one of the sets was about $150 in materials (authentic LEGO parts), and he made a point of telling me – like three times – that wasn’t counting his labor. Super nice guy though! He runs a LEGO podcast that I’ll have to listen to and give a shout-out to here. Seriously, great idea.
SANS Course Updates
Like I said, there’s a lot more to talk about in posts over the next couple of days and weeks, but I just wanted to get another post up and start putting out more content. I’m continuously working on updating the SANS SEC 497 (OSINT) course and the SEC 587 Advanced OSINT course, which I’m allowed to publicly say has a certification releasing in a few months! I’ve been working on it for months but haven’t been allowed to speak about it publicly until last week, so I’m super excited to share that the 587 Advanced OSINT course will be receiving a cert. I’m not sure what the name of the cert will be yet, but everyone who’s taken 587 recently should have gotten a survey email about the possibility of getting that exam as we start going through the process.
Wrapping Up
Yeah, like I said, a lot of fun stuff to talk about coming up. If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up. Other than that, hope everyone is doing well, and I’ll start cranking out some more blog posts now.
Thanks!
Matt
