Posted by Martijn Grooten on Aug 28, 2017
When previewing VB conference talks, I often get excited about presentations that are to showcase clever attacks and brilliant techniques to fight them. About Mick Moran's VB2017 presentation though, rather than feeling excited, I feel uncomfortable. It is, however, one of the most important talks ever to have been presented at a Virus Bulletin conference, and for that reason, I am very much looking forward to it.
Mick, a member of An Garda Síochána, will talk about his work fighting the creation and sharing of online child abuse – something that not only affects society's most vulnerable members, but in which the Internet in general, and the security tools of which we are all so fond in particular, play a role to help facilitate heinous crimes.
In his presentation, Mick will take the audience 'on a tour of one of the darkest parts of society', and will argue that online child abuse is as much an infosec issue as a police one, and is an issue in which the security community has an important role to play.
Earlier this year, Mick was awarded M3AAWG's Mary Litynski award for his work in fighting online child abuse. A slightly shortened version of a talk he gave at a M3AAWG meeting in 2013 can be found on YouTube:
Register for VB2017 now to hear not only this important talk, but also talks by more than 50 other speakers on real security threats, and how we can defend against them.
