Hacktivity has turned 12. An impressive age, made all the more impressive by the fact that the Festival has been steadily growing from year to year.

Those who attend Hacktivity have a lot to look forward to this year too: a total of 30 presentations and 4 workshops will be available, offering serious IT-related content, new tricks, techniques and solutions. There will be a new section as well as lots of fun at this year’s conference, including the well-tried hacking contest, hardware hacking, lockpicking and a party at night.

This year’s Hacktivity keynote speaker is none other than Felix Lindner, known as ’FX’ in the hacker community, who is the founder and senior security consultant of Recurity Labs. His presentation is meant to be a surprise, we only know his point of view.

According to Felix, hacking has definitively changed when international relations shift because of one person taking dubious USB drives to all three superpowers, when a single exploit may be worth tens of thousands of dollars to military and law enforcement agencies around the world while at the same time the underlying vulnerabilities are being declared dual use technologies, a.k.a. weapons.

Be it a home HotSpot or the system of the largest global enterprises, it is probably a network where 'FX' has made his contributions to security. After researching the vulnerabilities of core networking devices and software Felix is now working on improving the Internet of the future.

His knowledge covers a unique spectrum ranging from the development of secure languages to the strategic defense of critical infrastructure. In addition to listening to his keynote address, this conference will also give participants a special opportunity to have a chat with 'FX'.

Besides Felix, other „VIPs” and topics will also be part of the programme from state-of-the-art technologies and fields to unusual cases. Marina Krotofil will give a presentation about a simulated Vinyl Acetate plant to demonstrate a complete cyber-attack which can devastate a company while remaining hidden.

Almost anything can be hacked nowadays and there is great potential in smart devices for hacking. Axelle Apvrille for instance will elaborate on how little we know about the security of trendy devices and will demonstrate how to hack Fitbit Flex.

Sandbox-based malware analysis technologies and anti-APT systems will also be put under the microscope. Zoltán Balázs will present a complete collection of methodologies to detect analytical environments while Boldizsár Bencsáth will show that even cutting-edge security products can be bypassed by simple methods and will demonstrate how they „tricked” anti-APT solutions last year.

Attila Marosi and Omer Coscun will help participants get a deeper understanding of state-sponsored malware. Following his highly successful presentation last year on FinFisher, this year Attila will dissect the attack platform of the Hacking Team this year while Omer will analyze the special features of Regin malware used against GSM networks.

On Saturday the Security Dome will host the OWASP track. OWASP (owasp.org) is a leading worldwide professional organization for application security activists, well-known for its free projects maintained by volunteering specialists, e.g. Top Ten, Testing guide, ASVS and SAMM.

Topics discussed in the Dome will include improving your security audits (aka „pentests”), improving your secure coding trainings, using a framework to implement ASVS properly and identifying security requirements via playing cards.

Hacking workshops for small groups called Hello Workshops will be held simultaneously to the presentations, welcoming those who want to improve their software analysis skills, are interested in forensics or curious about how to utilize the less well-known possibilities of widely known protocols.

This year’s Hacktivity will also host a roundtable discussion organized by Deloitte and held in Larus restaurant. Moderated by Iván Bedő (HVG magazine), the event will focus on IT security/education. Representatives of the trainers as well as their customers will be present to discuss topics such as the IT specialists’ education, the relationship between the IT industry and education, dialogue between the two fields etc.

If you are interested in getting hands-on experience in hacking and a free ticket to Hacktivity you should visit the courses offered by the Budapest Hackerspace where participants can gain in-depth knowledge of a practical field of hacking. The top participants will receive one of the ten available tickets.

Barely a month to go and the two-day hacker conference will start at the MOM Cultural Centre.

More information: https://hacktivity.com/en/news/save-the-date-hacktivity-october-9-10-2015/