From 20 to 22 October 2015, the 11th edition of hack.lu was in full force in Luxembourg, assembling more than 400 international security professionals representing 40 different countries for one of the largest and oldest Information Security conferences in Europe.
The two-day conference presented the opportunity for the open discussion of security vulnerabilities and discoveries through an amalgam of events, beginning with the Malware Information Sharing Platofrm (MISP) summit side event. The MISP aims to share, store and correlate indicators of Compromises from attacks and cyber-security threats, with presentations delving into upcoming versions and improvements, as well as legal and technical aspects.
The Internet of Things featured heavily as a topic and was engaged with in interesting ways, notably scientist Morie Moe's talk on becoming a living part of the Internet of Things due to the wireless interface for remote monitoring of her pacemaker.
Axelle Apvrille caused a sensation upon presenting her findings demonstrating the vulnerability of Fitbit Flex. Using Fitbit to deliver code to a computer, she showed how the Fitbit device could be infected in a matter of seconds and from a distance of about 15 feet, merely by using its Bluetooth radio.
Yaniv Balmas spoke on Key-Logger, Video, Mouse (KVM) and how to turn one into a raging key-logging monster. His presentation of a live demo of the POC code showed that air-gapped networks might not be segregated and that malware code could actually exist outside the computer, perpetuating through reboots, wipes, formats and even hardware replacement.
The Capture the Flag (CTF) contest of the conference aimed to reconcile the theme around education and enrolled more than 300 teams for the 2015 edition. A Polish team by the name of Dragon Sector came out on top, followed by American teams PPP and Samurai. The first on-site teams are ranked 4th, Shellpish (USA); 5th, More Smoked Leet Chicken (Russia), and 10th, Pollypocket (BE).
Anther side event, CryptoParty4Kids, was also held in conjunction with the theme of education and gathered over 20 8-12 year olds. Here children made their first steps in hacking culture, gaining knowledge of the basics of practical cryptography.
"We are really proud of this edition that gathered world class experts and speakers and received an amazing international press coverage," commented Alexandre Dulaunoy from the Computer Incident Response Center Luxembourg (CIRCL).
The next edition has already been announced for 18-20 October 2016 in Luxembourg.
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