Reputed international companies are present at the event

Nov 22, 2014 10:24 GMT  ·  By

Touted as the most important security event in Central Eastern Europe, the fifth edition of DefCamp is scheduled to start on November 25, in Bucharest, Romania.

This year, there are three days of workshops and two days of conference, where speakers and trainers from all over the world share their knowledge and findings with the participants.

Keynote speakers are Mika Lauhde from SSH Communications Security, the original developer of the Secure Shell protocol, and Paul de Souza, Director of Cyber Security Forum Initiative (CSFI).

CSFI will also provide a certificate of completion to workshop attendees for “Introduction to Cyber Warfare and Operations Design,” a course where the core skills for practical and dynamic defense are taught.

Security professionals from all over the world are attending

The list of speakers is about 30 entries long and includes security professionals from a diverse range of organizations and companies in the industry.

Among the subjects approached are reverse engineering, vulnerability assessment, hosting services used by cybercriminals, penetration testing, securing data on Android, privacy tools journalists should rely on, the prerequisites for a cyber warrior, detection of unknown malware, or common social engineering techniques.

International companies participating at the event include Bitdefender, Trustwave, Bullguard, Codenomicon, Coseinc, Cyphort, Akamai, Security Innovation, Security Brokers, SignalSEC, Dognædis, and Ixia.

Some Romanian firms with global operations are also present, the list featuring Safetech Innovations, KPMG Romania, UTI GRUP, and Firmware.RE. Independent security researchers and hackers will be holding presentations, too.

The conference has Andrei Avadanei as founder and CEO, and it is a project of Cyber Security Research Center from Romania, a non-governmental organization that promotes, coordinates and implements security information research.

Avadanei has told us that most of the attendees are deeply rooted in the IT security field and hold key positions in the company security divisions of their organizations. They, along with students, are the most numerous, the percentage being of up to 70% of all participants.

A series of contests will take place during the conference

Since it is a security conference addressed to hackers too, a capture the flag (CTF) competition has also been organized, with qualifications taking place online and the final round starting on November 28 (24 hours to solve 20 problems), followed the next day by the awards ceremony.

Other activities will also take place during the conference, such as website pentesting for attendees, hacking contest for finding information on a specific individual (Target John), bypassing  security challenges set up on a computer (Hack the Machine), getting past the defenses in certain applications (App2Own).

There are 11 finalists this year, with teams of hackers from different countries (Belgium, Romania, Germany, Russia, Turkey and Poland). The prize pool is €3,000 / $3,700.

DefCamp started in 2011 and its first edition had only 80 attendees; an iteration held the same year in a different location gathered almost twice as many people. Since then, it attracted a more numerous crowd, recording about 400 participants last year and expecting more than 600 this year.

Starting 2012, DefCamp has been hosted at the Crystal Palace Ballrooms Bucharest, Romania, and an entry fee must be paid to attend. Until November 25, the admission fee for the event is €25 / $31 for students and €50 / $62 for everyone else.

Talking about the DefCamp 2013, Raoul Chiesa, founder and president of The Security Brokers, said that “Once you know DefCamp, you just can't miss it anymore;” he is on the speaker list this year.

DefCamp 2014 (8 Images)

DefCamp is at its fifth edition
DefCamp 2014 list of speakersEvent holds Introduction to Cyber Warfare and Operations Design workshop
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