Yesterday I managed to attend the 3rd Infocom Security event here in Athens. It was a full house, given the fact that the registration queue was so long that I gave up and went for coffee for half an hour before returning to the desk. Such a high attendance was to be expected, since this is a “free of charge” event. I saw almost all familiar faces (whether we’ve been introduced or not) that I see in other events and gatherings which are considerably smaller. This only makes it a success.
For as long as I stayed there, I was on the hallway track. It was too difficult to secure a place within the halls, so I wandered around the booths with a lot of other attendees. The most interesting one IMHO, was by census since these guys did something that the others did not: The displayed a zero day exploit. Quite impressive stuff accompanied by an excellent and thorough technical explanation. In the end I had an interesting exchange with them that went along these lines:
– Since you are not in the exploit selling business, why are you showing this to me here?
– We aim to show that even when you do your best (and most do not) you may end up with a false sense of security. And we aim to help you with that.
A lot of people opt for the blue pill and take a bet: things won’t break while they are in office. Even competent people put their heads in the sand sometimes.
So there, it was a “red pill” presentation, quite different from the typical “blue pill” ones that we’re used to. And the best thing that I got from the event.
—
#include<std/disclaimer.h> /* I have known the census people for some years and share a graduate supervisor with one of them */
Managing organized complexity 
useless pesonal philosophical spam :): a lot of blue pills constitute a red pill and vice versa.