DEFCON Kerala Gears Up for Annual Meet at Kochi

DEFCON Kerala (DC0497) has announced their second Annual Meet on Information Security at the break of Christmas. The venue for the second meet would be Kochi widely known as the queen of the Arabian Sea. March 8, 2014 will see the grand opening of the meet at Kochi.

DEFCON is an annual security meet organized for hackers and newbies interested in Hacking and study of Information Security. DEFCON Kerala got officially registered and got the chance to host its first meet last year at Kannur. This year’s Annual Meet is going to be bigger, better and more informative than last year’s meet, according to the official DEFCON Kerala website.

I got to talk with Archith KP, a hacker and one of the organizers of DEFCON Kerala and a prominent member, and one of my best friends. According to him, this year’s meet will definitely be bigger than last year’s sudden meet. This year will see for the first time, online events in DEFCON Kerala, for example. Moreover, promotions have already begun across web-space to encourage people interested to participate in the event. Apart from the traditional events, there will also be new events that will encourage participation. Traditional events include Research Paper presentation and the famous hacking competition, Capture The Flag. Last year’s meet also had Capture The Flag but this year, it will be held online too. In this way, people can still participate without having to officially come to the venue – Archith said.

HackSpace is new to this year’s DEFCON. HackSpace is an interactive hands-on workshop on hardware hacking. It'll cover everything from basic micro-controller programming to hardware based attacks. You’ll be able to see and hear about Raspberry Pi, Arduino and lots of other stuff at the event. This is definitely a major attraction and is definite to attract hardware lovers across Kerala.

You will also be able to hear some of the best Hackers and Security Programmers speak at the event presenting their Research. You’ll also be able to hear and learn about new security exploits and the common effective ones as well. Besides these, the event will also cover the core topics of Information Security as well. This will be a good workshop for people employed in networking as well as for the interested people. It’ll definitely be a boost to your existing knowledge and you can learn to take measures against advanced attacks.

The only downside of the event was the date. The month of March will be a busy month for students as almost every annual exam is held that month. Not to mention the students of 12th and 10th standard who will be missing the event greatly due to their board exams which is scheduled to be conducted on the month of March. For this sole reason, even Archith who was a prominent Speaker at last year’s DEFCON, will drop out of the event. He expressed his disappointment on this regard. For the same reason, I too will be dropping out. There goes my chance, again.

The DEFCON Kerala team.

If you are a hacker and if you are interested to present your Research, you can do that by clicking here. Or, if you are someone who would like to learn hacking or if you are interested to participate, you can register for the event by going here (If you are a student, you can register for a discounted price). To get more details and information on this year’s DEFCON Kerala, you can visit the official website. Or, you can follow DEFCON Kerala on Twitter or Facebook to get the latest updates.