The first day of Area41 is over, and it had its fair share of interesting security talks. Of course, as with any conference, the real action was in the networking—meeting people and catching up with colleagues. It was a good time.
We started with a keynote from Paula Januszkiewicz, Founder & CEO of CQURE, on “Hacker’s Perspective on New Risks: Revising the Cybersecurity Priorities for 2024.” It was engaging, full of demos, which is a bit unorthodox for a keynote, but it kept things lively.
Elliot Ward’s talk, “Action Anomalies: A Hacker’s Guide to GitHub Actions,” gave us a rundown of GitHub Actions and highlighted the security areas to be cautious about. Worth noting for anyone using GitHub.
“Insert Coin: Hacking Arcades for Fun” by Ignacio Navarro took a different direction than I anticipated. Instead of old arcade machines, it focused on some pretty shabby arcade management software with questionable security.
Michael Oelke’s “Call on Me, Unify! - Hacking Desktop Phones” was technically intriguing, offering a deep dive into the vulnerabilities of desktop phones.
I’m curious to see what Day 2 has in store. Let’s see what happens next.
