#hackersonthehill — Public Fediverse posts

Cybersecurity needs trust before a crisis. This is true for a "regular" technical crisis, but also holds up for a policy crisis.

Hackers on the Hill is the best way to start building trust from both sides, so that we can prevent cybersecurity policy crises of the future.

It's been a blast organising the Dutch Hackers at the Hof!

https://www.utwente.nl/en/digital-society/news/2026/5/917774/cybersecurity-needs-trust-before-a-crisis
#HackersOnTheHill #HackersAtTheHof

🚨 Announcing 🚨 Hackers on the Hill - Colorado call for participation. (long post, please read, boost, and share widely!)

For the first time, this event will be held at a state capitol, here in Denver. We are working to recruit participants who might also be attending the Wild West Hackin' Fest conference in February.

What is Hackers on the Hill? The event involves people who study or work in the technology or cybersecurity field, coming to the capitol to engage directly with lawmakers, their staff, and/or the staff of state committees.

The goal of the event is to provide a nonpartisan pool of cybersecurity experts to engage in dialogue with elected officials and their staff, in order to answer any questions they might have about cybersecurity, digital privacy, or technology policy that may be under consideration in the coming year.

This is an effort to help educate and provide guidance, through mediated conversations, offered by very experienced people who simply want to ensure that lawmakers have access to accurate and relevant information to help them guide their decision-making.

You may (or may not) be aware that Colorado state lawmakers have been at the forefront of legislation that connects directly with this effort; In past years, the state has passed legislation to promote the right to repair, to prevent various forms of abusive practices by users of generative AI products, and to protect the integrity and security of Colorado's elections. This year, there will be several bills under consideration that touch on various aspects of what we work on, which makes this a timely and relevant topic.

For this event, we are looking for participants with relevant experience in cybersecurity, data privacy, information assurance, enterprise network policy deployment, incident response, or threat investigations...or anyone else who self-identifies as a hacker and seeks to find creative, out of the box solutions to complex technical problems as part of their work or education.

An ideal candidate has no particular agenda, other than a strong motivation to keep people safe and data secure, and for lawmakers to get information that does not push a particular business interest. If you currently or formerly worked as a paid lobbyist, you're unfortunately not the right person for this event, as we have a strict no-shilling policy. We're looking for infosec professionals or students, willing to give half a day of time and energy to help people in positions of authority to understand the implications of various policy considerations.

Does that sound like you? If it does, please fill out our call-for-participation form: https://forms.gle/d7s9EjbFece9xMqg8

#HackersOnTheHill #COpolitics #TechPolicy #hackers #cybersecurity #infosec #policy

Misc story time:
tldr: I've been collecting security conference stickers for 20+ years and just now got around to using them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not the kind of person to put stickers on my laptop. This means that for 23 years (apparently), when I got stickers from a conference, I kept them, put them in a bag, moved them from house-to-house, but never actually did anything with them. Until now.

I finally found a usage; which is decorating the otherwise-sketchy-looking metal ammo case which @VeronicaKovah & I are now using to carry phones with us to trainings. We watched some videos on youtube that make it seem like those LiPo fire-protection bags would do a whole lot of not-much in the event that a fire broke out on one of the batteries. But a simple metal box seemed to do a lot better in terms of containing the flames.

So we of course expect that airport security will always stop us when traveling with them (though at least this time our TSA pre-check status seemed to give us a pass on the way out). But the expectation is that contrary to what you might thing, adding hacking conference stickers will actually be disarming, rather than alarming, with security personnel - at least when compared to the alternative of seeing a raw ammo canister ;)

The oldest sticker seems to be from DEF CON 10 (X), circa 2002 (my first DEF CON was 8 FWIW). In general I don't seek out stickers, but I do think the BadBIOS and "I want to believe" ones are things I probably got from Joe Fitz as they were of-the-moment and relevant to my interests. (If you're not familiar with the latter, it's from a very FUDish cover article [1]). I could have completely filled them, but I left a little bit of space for the future. Check out the larger pics for a potential stroll down memory lane. (RIP Shmoocon, Hackademic.info, NoSuchCon. Memento mori conference organizers ;))

#DEFCON, #BlackHat, #ShmooCon, #BlueHat, #RingZer0, #HackLU, #HardwearIO, #DistrictCon, #HackFest, #NoSuchCon, #DeepSec, #HITB, #HackersOnTheHill

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Misc story time:
tldr: I've been collecting security conference stickers for 20+ years and just now got around to using them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not the kind of person to put stickers on my laptop. This means that for 23 years (apparently), when I got stickers from a conference, I kept them, put them in a bag, moved them from house-to-house, but never actually did anything with them. Until now.

I finally found a usage; which is decorating the otherwise-sketchy-looking metal ammo case which @VeronicaKovah & I are now using to carry phones with us to trainings. We watched some videos on youtube that make it seem like those LiPo fire-protection bags would do a whole lot of not-much in the event that a fire broke out on one of the batteries. But a simple metal box seemed to do a lot better in terms of containing the flames.

So we of course expect that airport security will always stop us when traveling with them (though at least this time our TSA pre-check status seemed to give us a pass on the way out). But the expectation is that contrary to what you might thing, adding hacking conference stickers will actually be disarming, rather than alarming, with security personnel - at least when compared to the alternative of seeing a raw ammo canister ;)

The oldest sticker seems to be from DEF CON 10 (X), circa 2002 (my first DEF CON was 8 FWIW). In general I don't seek out stickers, but I do think the BadBIOS and "I want to believe" ones are things I probably got from Joe Fitz as they were of-the-moment and relevant to my interests. (If you're not familiar with the latter, it's from a very FUDish cover article [1]). I could have completely filled them, but I left a little bit of space for the future. Check out the larger pics for a potential stroll down memory lane. (RIP Shmoocon, Hackademic.info, NoSuchCon. Memento mori conference organizers ;))

#DEFCON, #BlackHat, #ShmooCon, #BlueHat, #RingZer0, #HackLU, #HardwearIO, #DistrictCon, #HackFest, #NoSuchCon, #DeepSec, #HITB, #HackersOnTheHill

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Misc story time:
tldr: I've been collecting security conference stickers for 20+ years and just now got around to using them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not the kind of person to put stickers on my laptop. This means that for 23 years (apparently), when I got stickers from a conference, I kept them, put them in a bag, moved them from house-to-house, but never actually did anything with them. Until now.

I finally found a usage; which is decorating the otherwise-sketchy-looking metal ammo case which @VeronicaKovah & I are now using to carry phones with us to trainings. We watched some videos on youtube that make it seem like those LiPo fire-protection bags would do a whole lot of not-much in the event that a fire broke out on one of the batteries. But a simple metal box seemed to do a lot better in terms of containing the flames.

So we of course expect that airport security will always stop us when traveling with them (though at least this time our TSA pre-check status seemed to give us a pass on the way out). But the expectation is that contrary to what you might thing, adding hacking conference stickers will actually be disarming, rather than alarming, with security personnel - at least when compared to the alternative of seeing a raw ammo canister ;)

The oldest sticker seems to be from DEF CON 10 (X), circa 2002 (my first DEF CON was 8 FWIW). In general I don't seek out stickers, but I do think the BadBIOS and "I want to believe" ones are things I probably got from Joe Fitz as they were of-the-moment and relevant to my interests. (If you're not familiar with the latter, it's from a very FUDish cover article [1]). I could have completely filled them, but I left a little bit of space for the future. Check out the larger pics for a potential stroll down memory lane. (RIP Shmoocon, Hackademic.info, NoSuchCon. Memento mori conference organizers ;))

#DEFCON, #BlackHat, #ShmooCon, #BlueHat, #RingZer0, #HackLU, #HardwearIO, #DistrictCon, #HackFest, #NoSuchCon, #DeepSec, #HITB, #HackersOnTheHill

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Misc story time:
tldr: I've been collecting security conference stickers for 20+ years and just now got around to using them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not the kind of person to put stickers on my laptop. This means that for 23 years (apparently), when I got stickers from a conference, I kept them, put them in a bag, moved them from house-to-house, but never actually did anything with them. Until now.

I finally found a usage; which is decorating the otherwise-sketchy-looking metal ammo case which @VeronicaKovah & I are now using to carry phones with us to trainings. We watched some videos on youtube that make it seem like those LiPo fire-protection bags would do a whole lot of not-much in the event that a fire broke out on one of the batteries. But a simple metal box seemed to do a lot better in terms of containing the flames.

So we of course expect that airport security will always stop us when traveling with them (though at least this time our TSA pre-check status seemed to give us a pass on the way out). But the expectation is that contrary to what you might thing, adding hacking conference stickers will actually be disarming, rather than alarming, with security personnel - at least when compared to the alternative of seeing a raw ammo canister ;)

The oldest sticker seems to be from DEF CON 10 (X), circa 2002 (my first DEF CON was 8 FWIW). In general I don't seek out stickers, but I do think the BadBIOS and "I want to believe" ones are things I probably got from Joe Fitz as they were of-the-moment and relevant to my interests. (If you're not familiar with the latter, it's from a very FUDish cover article [1]). I could have completely filled them, but I left a little bit of space for the future. Check out the larger pics for a potential stroll down memory lane. (RIP Shmoocon, Hackademic.info, NoSuchCon. Memento mori conference organizers ;))

#DEFCON, #BlackHat, #ShmooCon, #BlueHat, #RingZer0, #HackLU, #HardwearIO, #DistrictCon, #HackFest, #NoSuchCon, #DeepSec, #HITB, #HackersOnTheHill

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Misc story time:
tldr: I've been collecting security conference stickers for 20+ years and just now got around to using them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm not the kind of person to put stickers on my laptop. This means that for 23 years (apparently), when I got stickers from a conference, I kept them, put them in a bag, moved them from house-to-house, but never actually did anything with them. Until now.

I finally found a usage; which is decorating the otherwise-sketchy-looking metal ammo case which @VeronicaKovah & I are now using to carry phones with us to trainings. We watched some videos on youtube that make it seem like those LiPo fire-protection bags would do a whole lot of not-much in the event that a fire broke out on one of the batteries. But a simple metal box seemed to do a lot better in terms of containing the flames.

So we of course expect that airport security will always stop us when traveling with them (though at least this time our TSA pre-check status seemed to give us a pass on the way out). But the expectation is that contrary to what you might thing, adding hacking conference stickers will actually be disarming, rather than alarming, with security personnel - at least when compared to the alternative of seeing a raw ammo canister ;)

The oldest sticker seems to be from DEF CON 10 (X), circa 2002 (my first DEF CON was 8 FWIW). In general I don't seek out stickers, but I do think the BadBIOS and "I want to believe" ones are things I probably got from Joe Fitz as they were of-the-moment and relevant to my interests. (If you're not familiar with the latter, it's from a very FUDish cover article [1]). I could have completely filled them, but I left a little bit of space for the future. Check out the larger pics for a potential stroll down memory lane. (RIP Shmoocon, Hackademic.info, NoSuchCon. Memento mori conference organizers ;))

#DEFCON, #BlackHat, #ShmooCon, #BlueHat, #RingZer0, #HackLU, #HardwearIO, #DistrictCon, #HackFest, #NoSuchCon, #DeepSec, #HITB, #HackersOnTheHill

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Hey, Colorado hacking community - do you want to join me to speak out against malicious abuse of deepfakes in the Colorado assembly on Monday?

Monday I will be testifying in front of the #Colorado #House State, Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs committee in support of a bill to prevent abuse of generative #AI in election campaigns.

If passed into law, it "prohibits the distribution of a communication that includes an undisclosed deepfake with actual malice as to the deceptiveness or falsity of the communication related to a candidate for public office"

This is the first of many bills to come that hope to rein in the abuse of generative AI and deepfake technology. Lawmakers clearly can see the risks of what happened in New Hampshire during their primary and they're concerned. At #HackersOnTheHill this was one of the topics we discussed with Senator #Hickenlooper's staff, then two weeks later, the thing we said was likely to happen...actually happened.

https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb24-1147

#CoLeg #COPolitics #Boulder

Spent much of yesterday afternoon and early evening with a bunch of policy wonk hackers and some hacker-friendly policy wonks at #HackersOnTheHill in Washington, DC. Met with two staffers from senator Hickenlooper's office and then became thoroughly lost in the tunnels under the Russell Senate office building before heading to a pub to confab with others from the event. It was a really special day.

I'm on my plane waiting to take off, headed to #HackersOnTheHill tomorrow to brief some senate staffers about risks posed by AI that they aren't hearing about. This seems like a particularly relevant survey, concluding the same thing I have been speculating about: AI will cause election disruptions in 2024 elections. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/10/wef-ai-election-disruption-poses-the-biggest-global-risk-in-2024.html

My unbroken streak of never attending #shmoocon will not be broken this year, but I will be in DC this week for #HackersOnTheHill to meet with congressional staffers and representatives to talk through technical and infosec topics they should be aware of in the coming year.

It'll be my first time attending this event, so if anyone in my circle will be there or has attended previously, I'd love to hear about how it went and how much preparation you did.

Also down for drinks/coffee/meeting up with other folks who will be there this week.

Excited to nerd out today! #HackersOnTheHill 👩🏼‍💻