Introduction
So, Black Hat Asia 2024! A big conference filled with a lot of cybersecurity booths and talks and I might add that the price of the ticket was very… very… expensive. Fortunately, Black Hat does offer sponsorships for students! With all my assignments and final year project not done, I irresponsibly signed up for it!
And guess what? I got it!
Double Sponsorship
Well the reason how I discovered I was sponsored was because Mr Yapp from Malaysia Cybersecurity Camp (MCC) asked us (us being MCC peeps) whether we got the email for it and me being a person who never checks my email went “I should check my emails more often”.
Remember MCC2023? No? READ MY BLOG ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE THERE!!!
Well anyways, Mr Yapp offered to sponsor transportation and accommodation for 5 MCC Alumni including me to Black Hat 2024! First of all, I am REALLY REALLY grateful for the offer because as a person who doesn’t get sponsorships that much, to get a sponsorship from Black Hat was already a miracle for me. To top that off, the transportation and as well as accommodation has been covered for us is really a blessing! So thank you Mr Yapp and RE:HACK for the transportation and accommodation!
Day One: SWAGS SWAGS SWAGS
So I just want to say 2 weeks before the conference, I was laughing at my own joke which I planned to post on Instagram about Black Hat. So here’s the joke.
Anyways during the first day, the first thought that came into my head was SWAGS SWAGS SWAGS!!! As Black Hat was a big conference, there will be a ton of well known companies there giving away their swags. HOWEVER, before that I met up with the rest of the MCC peeps!
From the left:
Amir was also sponsored by Black Hat but he covered his own transportation & accommodation
After some swag collection, I met Jason!! Let me tell you something, whenever I come to Singapore to meet Jason it’s always a cat and mouse game, because he would be somewhere when I try to meet him and I would be somewhere when he tries to meet me. Not only did I meet Jason, I also met Prashanth Krishnappa from Cyber Cohesion! He recognised me as Cyber Cohesion recently collaborated with my university’s cybersecurity club, FSEC-SS (thanks to Roheen) and because he has seen some of my work, notably my sharing session at SherpaSec about Velociraptor.
Leg Godt
Lego which originated from the Danish phrase “play well” and oh boy we sure did! So there’s a section in Black Hat where everyone is playing a part into building a Lego art piece.
We are given a paper with a grid filled with colour IDs and a black Lego piece. Basically, we needed to fill up the Lego piece with individual pixels of the art piece.
Every section build by the people is counted as an entry to winning one of the Lego sets below!
In short, we didn’t get the lucky draw in the end. However, before the actual lucky draw, I asked the dude managing the station whether we could get the art piece, Dave Schefcik. And again let me tell you something, he said that art piece is around, if I recalled correctly $45,000 USD, it could be more than that. After it’s completed, it will be placed within the Black Hat office in either USA or Singapore branch. Here’s a recollection of what happened when he said that:
me: hopefully it won't break during shipping
dave: oh it will... it will...
Also, he is also doing this art piece in Black Hat USA which is going to be 4 times bigger! Here’s the kicker, he revealed his real job and boy oh boy it left me saying, “YOU HAVE EVERYBODY’S DREAM JOB!!!!”. Apparently, he works in a custom Lego building company called Brick Nerd and he said this was his side job. His real job is the director of a Cybersecurity company.
Anyways, I also asked him about the custom Black Hat Lego set, whether I can buy it from Brick Nerd. Well he said, the set is going to be expensive because not only considering the custom box, custom stickers, Lego pieces but the labour costs of designing the set and making it exactly like how Lego produces their Lego sets! Fun fact, the most expensive part of the Lego set was the black hat (funny enough) not because of the conference but because Lego only made a black hat once and he had to go into a black market for buying Lego pieces and at that time it cost $5 USD per hat. At the conference, he said that the price has shot up to $7 USD.
The most impressive part was after the art piece was finished, Dave was identifying wrong pieces of Lego placed onto the art piece. Teng got curious and was wondering how does he know those pieces were placed incorrectly. Well, being half drunk I asked him (I was VERY social after drinking 1 beer and 2 types of wine). He said he looked at the image for a long time because he was the one who designed it, placed it into photoshop and had to pair Lego pieces which matches the colour of the image designed PIXEL BY PIXEL.
This was really impressive and we had a fun time building the art piece and I would recommend Black Hat to do this again if they can. It makes every conference fun and interactive.
Good Samaritan
Okay, a good samaritan isn’t the correct term, but basically we (the MCC peeps) met a guy from Zimbabwe, Blessing who was really nice to us and he gave us his take on the cybersecurity scene in Zimbabwe. We had a very good conversation on culture, cybersecurity, university. At the end of the conversation, he said he is an ambassador for GitHub and Microsoft. Hence, he proceeds to take out a bag of GitHub and Microsoft swags and gave it all to us. This is what he said:
him: oh take it, i have a whole box full of it!
me: oh can i give you my address, so you can ship it to me? XD
Anyways, he was a REALLY nice guy and we MCC peeps have agreed, PROTECT HIM AT ALL COSTS XD!
Well, here’s the loot for today! After the first day, I was very happy and didn’t want to leave because it was completely different from the conferences we had in Malaysia! I’m not going to say why but let’s just say I learned A LOT from the people from Black Hat.
Tipsy = Social
So, for anyone who knows me I am not an extrovert, I’m just a tad bit confident and loud. However, as seen in the Lego section, alcohol is the magic potion to my extrovert side. So after the conference, Belinda invited us MCC peeps to go to a bar to drink and socialise!
Before the socialising started I just want to say that the bar is bloody hidden, Teng and I were searching for the place as if we were drug addicts searching for drugs. But, we found the place. So what did we talk about there? Well after 5 beers, these are the conversations I remembered.
I met an Industrial Control Systems (ICS) hacker from France, Faiz who owns a company that does just that! He showed us a picture of their company demonstrating the simulation of the Stuxnet attack with a real Siemens Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)! He also showed us a picture of them running a simulation of hacking a boat. He also gave us pointers on how to start learning ICS hacking through blogs, YouTube, books and making your own miniature ICS. Basically, my kind of learning (research baby~)
Another person that I met is Snorky, who is also from France! He is a red team leader who has been in cybersecurity for 20+ years! It was crazy talking to him and comparing how it was last time as CTFs wasn’t a thing so what they do was to buy and build their own labs! However, nowadays the young bloods would spin up an AWS instance. At one point I got curious about C2s or Command and Control Servers and I asked what kind of C2s do they use.
So what he said was something I never thought of, he said that they would test with common C2s used such as Cobalt Strike, Havoc, Sliver and so on. If it’s detected, they would try different profiles. If that is detected, they would use custom C2 servers. Basically, they are adapting to the client’s systems, because there’s no point creating a custom C2 just to be undetected. So start from common tools then move up if needed.
Day 2: MORE SWAGS and Connections
The Hunt for the Rare Yo-Yo
The highlight for Day 2 of Black Hat Asia was the rare yoyos!! These yoyos are specifically made by Snyk and Bugcrowd. These yoyo’s were very hard to get as there were a limited amount of them. Luckily for me I managed to snag not just 1 of each but 2 of each which I’m gave away one of each to Roheen and Teng.
Leg Godt Returns
Remember the Lego lucky draw? Well, there’s a contest to give away 5 more of these limited edition Black Hat Lego sets. So what was the contest about? You’re supposed to build something based on a theme with Lego! The build was judged based on looks, creativity and storyline. So there were 2 rounds, of which I managed to win one in the 2nd round. The theme was “Man in the Middle”. So what I did was that I build a bridge with a man in the middle, in the middle of walking.
Ah yes, set your eyes on the majestic Lego set!
High on Swags & Connections
So, other then the custom Lego set, there was a restock on swags!!! So, as usual i got a ton to give away to my friends. With the excitement of swags comes with the highness of it. I was able to talk a lot with plenty of people, one of which was the CEO of a CTF platform called CyberTalents, Moataz Salah. He was really passionate about his CTF platform and he wanted opinions on his platform, which was pretty good. I hope to play more on the platform to learn and see what Moataz has in store for the platform. Also, CyberTalents also hosted a CTF for BlackHat and the challenges were pretty decent I would say, and I will join again if I have the chance.
Again with Belinda’s help which I really appreciate and grateful for, she introduced us to 3 more people at the conference! One of the people she introduced us to was Louis, who was also an ICS hacker from South Korea! Another person Belinda introduced us to was Ashley who works in Cisco. Unfortunately, I didn’t really talk to them but I would really want a chance to get to talk to them about their research and work one day. The last person Belinda introduced us to was Laurie from HackerOne! From the beginning I thought HackerOne was only a bug bounty website, but apparently they even have a CTF platform which I wasn’t aware of. What’s special about this platform is that we can learn how to get into bug bounty by doing their challenges. And every completed challenge contributes to a hacker’s reputation on HackerOne which may land them in private programs.
Conclusion
At the end of the conference, I was really happy, genuinely happy. Why? Was it the swags? Well, partly lol but the main thing was the people I just met and the people I got to catch up with. I felt like I belong in a REAL community where we can share our knowledge and cool stuff. Not only I got to learn something from the people I connected with, but I also got to learn from the people at the booths who were willing to share with us even though we were just students and were really enthusiastic about it too. That’s my opinion for a cybersecurity community, in simple terms share knowledge, learn from others (who ever they may be), and lastly but most importantly swags! (jk about the swags hahaha)
Here’s a flag for getting to the end!
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