Impressions from Hacktivity 2012

I have recently returned from Budapest, where I participated at Hacktivity 2012 as a speaker. Several people asked me for impressions from the conference and I thought it would be better to write them all in one place, here.

So I presented “Digipass Instrumentation for Fun and Profit“. I will not post the slides here as the video of the talk will be soon made public on the conference’s website http://www.hacktivity.com, including the slides.

The location of the conference (MOM Cultural Center) was well chosen as it had two separate halls for presentations to be held in parallel without any interference. There were also smaller rooms for different types of activities (lockpicking, electronics lab, various workshops and games) where people could try their skills throughout the day.

I think there were more than 1000 participants in the first day of the conference, their number decreasing until the end of the second day. As any other security conference, the wireless network was full of people scanning, sniffing and trying to hack eachother. Not a good place to connect with your ‘smart’phone 🙂

From the speaker’s perspective, I always had the feeling that the conference’s organizers did their best to make us feel welcome and special. Of course, we did our best to make good presentations in order to satisfy the numerous audience who was eager to hear quality stuff. I think everybody had something to win from this approach.

Overall, there were good technical presentations, some more basic and some more advanced. You could find talks for any taste and flavor. This was the schedule.

In conclusion, I recommend Hacktivity as a great security conference to attend or to give a talk. Many interesting people and a great personal and professional experience.