Tentative Speaker List

The following speakers have submitted abstracts for presentations at PhreakNIC 9. Selection will be finalized by the end of August and scheduling will be set by mid September.

• Jason Scott - The BBS Documentary Jason will briefly talk about the experience of collecting the footage for the documentary before explaining the finer points of the drinking game. We will then watch said documentary and enjoy ourselves.
• Amy H. Sturgis, PhD - Still Big Brother After All These Years What dystopian futures have been predicted by science fiction? Which predictions speak directly to 21st century realities? George Orwell's 1984 was not the first work of literature to suggest a dystopian future, but its vision of Big Brother, memory holes, and Newspeak introduced a new vocabulary to those who were concerned about the growth of state power and control. Join Amy as she considers 1984, the tradition it has informed, and why works of dystopian science fiction are relevant in today's political, social, and technological climate.
• Acidus - Layer 7 Fun : Extending Web Apps in Interesting Ways Modern Web applications offer an amazing array of services. Complex systems like Gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, and Outlook Web Access are accessible by anyone with just a browser. While these services offer a range of capabilities, people are extending these applications by writing web apps that run on top of other web apps. GMail File System, Housing maps, and ChicagoCrime.org are excellent examples of increasing the utility of a web app without having access to its code or the consent of the original creator.
  We will discuss some technologies used in complex web apps (AJAX, RSS, backend databases) and discuss how to directly interface with them. We will discuss the legality of extending existing web apps. I will be referencing an application I wrote that runs on top of TinyURL as a case study and release the code.
• A Myers/D VanBelleghem - Smoke and Mirrors Security experts and IT managers have been preaching against security through obscurity for years. The general tone being that obscurity could not be relied on to protect critical infrastructure assets. The goal of this session is to illustrate how appropriate methods of obscurity and misdirection can be an effective defensive strategy used to enhance the security posture of a system or organization. Using various techniques coupled with Intrusion Detection Systems and honeypot technologies, misdirection and obscurity can prevent successful attacks while forcing would-be-hackers to unwittingly reveal themselves. This session will encompass the application of misdirection and obscurity at the protocol, operating system and application level layers. This presentation will show case a collection of misdirection techniques that have been collected from numerous government and Fortune 500 client risk assessment engagements.
• Ethan McCargar - Dr. Cablelove, or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the QAM" Learn the theory and practice of creating creating an analog TV channel, and how to insert it into a cable network without bollocksing everything up. We will cover analog and digital cable theory, troubleshooting, and practice. Possible ideas as to what you can do with your own cable channel(s) in your house and others will also be covered. A basic understanding of how to turn a T.V. on and off as well as the ability to change channels is recommended for understanding this presentation.
• MaxieZ - Web Security 101 An indepth look at the security systems in place on most web sites and vulnerabilities in sites leading to unwanted access. This covers http authentication, http referring and most importantly php/cgi attacks leading to remote execution.
• Decius - The Rant Who knows what Decius will rant about once we get a few beers in him?
• Scott Milliken - MythTV Isn't As Hard As You Think In this presentation it will be demonstrated just how quickly and easily one can set up MythTV using KnoppMyth. Using the most common platform components (Hauppauge TV cards and NVidia video) it can be a very painless transition from blank hard drive to capturing cartoons. He will actually start with a pre-assembled PC but with a blank hard drive and create a working MythTV box in less than the allotted time of 50 minutes.
• Greg Zapf - Vehicular Computing: What, How and Why? Greg Zapf will review the basic hardware requirements and offer a collection of applications which will assist anyone comfortable with system building to construct and operate an in-car computer for, at minimum, basic media playback purposes. He'll also discuss general system design principles as applied to in-car computing (safety vs. functionality, pricing by feature, media and data... transport or sync?) PhreakNIC 7 attendees saw his Corolla computer with very early car computing features... this time he's bringing the latest and greatest and will provide a demo during the Q&A portion of the presentation.
• Kenneth Swain - Hacker to Professional Information Security currently has a disease and it is the current crop of managers. The majority of those individuals have letters behind ther name and that is about it. You have people running Information Security departments that do not know how a hacker thinks. Most of these people would be worried if they ever heard anyone of their employees talking about 2600 or phrack. They do not think. They are just worried that someone might know more then they do. The only way this can change is with those that we currently put in jail for exploring and experimenting. We need more of these people to take the reigns and lead companies in the direction of real security and not just trying to buy magic bullets. We need to get more people in their ranks so we can change things from the inside.
• Tom Cross and Nick Levay - Information Warfare for The People Tom Cross and Nick Levay from the Industrial Memetics Institute will be speaking about their ongoing explorations of social information architecture. Topics covered will include future directions for the MemeStreams software, Web 2.0, community grouping, and meme flow in social networks. They will also be unveiling a patch for MediaWiki designed to improve the reliability of Wikipedia articles.
• Prof. Robert Knop - Blender: Rendering and Animating in 3D for Astronomy Blender is a free (as in GPL) 3D modelling, rendering and animation package. In this talk, Robert will describe how he's used it together with GIMP and Mencoder to create animations and used in teaching introductory astronomy. Some of his movies can be found online here.
• dc0de - Outbound Content Compliance Outbound Content Compliance is a growing industry within Information Security. This area of control watches traffic and data in networks to scan the content for potential violations of policy. With the increase in visibility of personal data loss, organizations are increasingly coming under fire to tighten their controls, and ensure data privacy to the consumer. Today, several 1st generation products provide the visibility to the "data leakage", providing the ability to modify existing controls to prevent further data loss. 2nd Generation products are on the immediate horizon, promising the ability to leverage the existing Information Security architectures to not only identify content in violation, but to prevent it's release into the "wild".
  This presentation will define the scope of the product market, the abilities of the products today, and discuss how they will effect not only the consumer, but the enterprise end user, the IT employee, and the InfoSec employee. Lastly, a demonstration of one of the products will also be included. This presentation is not meant to be a sales presentation, but an exploration in how outbound content compliance will effect you and your computer experience.
• Catonic - Professional Wifi: How to Build Reliable Links Ever wondered exactly how much engineering goes into professionally installing WiFi links to 99.999% availibility? In this talk, Catonic will be covering calculating path loss, Fresnel zones, Gain, Power, and other advanced topics which when combined are used to design RF links between two locations. Additionally, Catonic will be providing an armchair analysis of the factors considered when Team PAD planned and then executed this year's record WiFi shot of 125 miles.
• Rodney Thayer - A Security Analysis of Skype This presentation will apply a security analyst's evaluation for the SKYPE (Voice over IP) Product and Service. It will present an analysis from three points of view: an enduser evaluation, an engineering assessment, and an attacker's target assessment. The purpose of this presentation is to provide a briefing to network/security technologists on the state of the defenses within the system, and points of potential risk, so as to aid in answering the question: "Is Skype safe to use?"
• Virgil - Artifical Life: Evolving the Way to Artificial Intelligence In the natural world, all known examples of even modest intelligence are products of the evolution of nervous systems living within an ecology. Artificial Life (Alife) is the study of natural selection acting on artificial organisms living within a computational environment. Alife simulations can replicate many of the forces behind the evolution of intelligence. Genetic algorithms can act as natural selection, neural networks can capture many aspects of real nervous systems, and virtual ecologies can provide a complex environment for fostering competition and cooperation. I will present a brief overview of the field, its recent development, as well as some of the research I've been doing on the "Polyworld" artificial life system. Polyworld is one particular alife simulator in which virtual organisms with artificial genetics, vision, neural networks, and learning compete for survival. I will show some of the behaviors we've seen in Polyworld such as foraging, flocking, niche formation, and tribalism. There will be humorous anecdotes, SEX, soothing animations, VIOLENCE, and a source code release at no additional cost.
• Strick - Croquet, or "How I Learned to Quite HTMLing and Pass the Virtual Joint" For information about Croquet, check out www.opencroquet.org.