Can you spot the moose?

We’re heading to ShmooCon January 20-22

The whole team at JumpWire is excited to be sponsoring 2023’s ShmooCon! Some of us have attended the conference in prior years, but always as a participant. This year JumpWire will have a booth showing off our product and we’ll be making launch announcements during the weekend.

ShmooCon might be our favorite conference of the year, so we are happy to be a sponsor. If you are planning to attend, stop by our booth and say hi!

What’s so great about ShmooCon

Hacker conferences are always a bit strange and fun, but ShmooCon strives to be a “hacker convention hell-bent on offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosec issues.”

In my experience, the talk subjects vary widely - I’ll always remember one researcher presenting data that firmware updates don’t always improve security, and something like 20% of wifi firmware patches actually introduce vulnerabilities! This year I’m excited to learn about China’s firewalled internet and German railway security.

They also put on more than talk tracks - there’s lockpicking, radio hamming, competitive CTF hacking and board gaming. It’s not unlikely that you miss a keynote trying to finally pick a level 4 lock.

ShmooCon also keeps ticket prices very reasonable. It makes them hard to get (they sell out in seconds) but also ensures that the attendees self-select with the hacker ethos - students, indie engineers, researchers are all able to join without needing an employer to pick up the tab for a ticket. As a result, it feels like few salesy folks are there, maybe they don’t like to geek out as much?

Not a real hacker

One more thing

We’ve also put together a CTF that is open to all attendees to compete for awesome swag prizes. You might be familiar with OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities or the danger weak WiFi encryption, but have you ever wanted to actively exploit them? CTFs are a fun activity to learn the inner details of attack vectors that have led to some real-life hacks.

The CTF opens on Friday, January 20th in the afternoon Eastern time.

Header photo by Kip Williams Hacker photo by Fábio Lucas