Posted by Martijn Grooten on Feb 24, 2016
Next week, almost everyone with a stake in or an opinion on IT security will be in San Francisco for the annual RSA Conference.
I will be there as well, and although Virus Bulletin doesn't have a booth at the event, I am looking forward to meeting old and new friends and discussing our tests, our upcoming conference, or simply the state of security in general.
I will also be giving a talk at RSA: How Broken Is Our Crypto Really?. In the 50-minute talk, I will look at a number of cryptographic protocols that have supposedly been broken in recent years (including RC4, SSLv3 and SHA-1). By looking at how the attacks against these protocols work, I will try to answer the question: what does "broken" mean in these cases?
While RSA is often seen as a marketing event — and if the number of PR emails I've received over the past few weeks are anything to go by, I would say that indeed it partly is — there are many interesting and often quite technical talks on the show's agenda.
But for more technical security content, BSides San Francisco, which is held on the Sunday and Monday before RSA, is the place to be.
I will also be giving a talk at BSides: Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Those Who are Afraid of Mathematics. The talk will be a non-technical introduction to the fascinating and relevant subject of elliptic curve cryptography.
Do say hello if you see me in San Francisco — or drop me an email if you're going to be there and want to chat.
