Day one for Sector began quietly enough. I missed the train that Myrcurial was riding on and had to catch the 8:07 to Toronto. A bit of a novelty to not have to combat traffic for a change. I sat down jammed my headphones into my ears and started to enjoy my morning regimen of The Herbalizer and Fatboy Slim. My serious caffeine depletion was taking root as I had been in a rush to make the train. Then I noticed the guy across the isle from me pull out his MacBook Pro. “Nice” I thought….
Then I noticed the Post-it notes from hell. I was stunned that from where I was sitting I could see ALL of his passwords. I could see his VPN login information for his company PASTED TO THE LAPTOP. So, taking a cue from Johnny Long I pulled out my cell phone and snapped this pic. From this angle I couldn’t see the info but, the guy standing over his shoulder sure did.
When I arrived at the conference Dr. Richard Reiner was well on his way with his keynote speech. It was funny watching some of the audience members twitch as he told them what they didn’t want to hear in some cases. But, for the most part the crowd was receptive.
Later Ira Winkler gave his keynote over lunch. I sat huddled with the Tripwire rep at his barren booth as he tried to hunt down his boxes that the organizers had managed to lose. Not cool. That didn’t stop folks from coming by.
Ira’s talk was remarkably engaging. I had not previously had the opportunity to hear him speak and it was thoroughly entertaining.
After lunch I was able to catch several other good presentations among which was Joanna Rutkowska and Mark Fabro who spoke of Virtual Rootkits and SCADA Security respectively. Mark Fabro’s talk was really good with lots of meat on the bones. A great presenter.
All in all the day was a rather successful one. There were no great revelations although I didn’t make it to every presentation. Later I ducked out from the reception that was hosted by Check Point and made my way back to the train. I saw a lot of people that I knew and a lot of new faces today. For a first time out Sector Security Conference is off to a promising start. Even if I didn’t get a nod on the thank you slide.
[tags]Sector, Sector Security Conference, Security Conferences[/tags]
It’s ridiculous to know the kind of information that you can gather on a GO Train. I take the train almost every day downtown and there is always two or three people per car who are using their laptop.
It’s amazing that they don’t realize that there are people who are watching their every keystroke. I remember sitting beside someone who works for a very large bank here in Toronto who was having difficulty logging into his computer. He very loudly called his support team and s-p-e-l-l-e-d out his corporate username and password to everyone in earshot. And that’s not even the half of it. A former coworker of mine from a previous job would fill in the metro crossword with the username/password that he saw someone log into their computer with. He then would hand the paper to them when he got off the train
You can get a lot of information about who people are and what they do just by reading their e-mail over their shoulder. It’s scary