Most conference I go to tend to just fade away at the end, RSA ended on a bit of a bang. The theme for the show was “Change” and the last keynote was all about the impact of security. It began with a video interview of Lulzsec founder and FBI informant Hector Monsegur talking about the mind of a hacker. We then heard from a professor on the way the hacked person feels, and how you can prepare yourself not to become paralyzed with fear. And finally we heard from Alec Baldwin on how a public person feels when their private emails are made public, i.e. the Sony Hack. Was a nice high note to end on… understand the impact of security – a nice touch.
In the morning I went to four breakout sessions:
The first one I walked out and switched over to a different one. The initial sounded like it was going to go into how to go from the hunted to the hunter in security. It ended up being a discussion on process… not what I wanted to hear on the final day, so instead I went to a detailed technical discussion on how the accelerometer can be used to identify a phone and generate your own unique identifier. The researchers also discussed how you can use the accelerometer can be used to identify someone vocally and potentially what they were saying. Cool science!
The second session was about building a CSOC for critical infrastructure. While the topic again sounded like it would be very interesting, it turned into how to build your business case. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was detailed.
The final session was how to use the techniques for building Game Consoles and mobile applications should be used to address the security issues in the development of Internet of Things devices. A very good presentation and I hope to talk to the speaker Matthew Clapham again – Go follow him on Twitter at @prodsec.