Hackers, ahoy!

Yeah well, Pune is cool too...

December 7, 2007

H/l: Hackers descending at city's ICC on Sunday
Intro: Country’s first computer hackers’ convention happens this week at Pune
CORRESPONDENT

From: Vrushali Lad

Mumbai: Reinforcing the city’s IT status, the country’s first ever convention for computer hackers – Club Hack – is all set to roll this Sunday at the International Convention Centre. Sadly, only computer systems geeks are invited and if you couldn’t make it this year, you can try in 2008.

Speaking to The Herald yesterday, founder of Club Hack, Rohit Srivastava said, “We got a great response to the convention, and from the papers we received since we opened entry in August this year, we have finalised 13 speakers. Of these, two are coming from overseas.”

The biggest boost to the endeavour, he said, was that of the 200 attendees pencilled in for the event, nearly 150 are Puneites. “We received a phenomenal response from techies in the city, as also other places like Bangalore and Hyderabad. We are hopeful that the one-day convention would be fruitful.”

Since the convention centers around the highly-sensitive area of computer system expertise – hacking, which is normally associated with cyber crime – the city’s police force will also be present in some number to “prevent any untoward incidents”.

Hackers are an exclusive band of people that are difficult to trace because they are not officially affiliated with any organisation. Said Rohit, who provides consultancy and training in information security, penetration testing and cyber crime investigation, “Some of the attendees are CEOs of top IT companies, while others are security researchers or even virus research analysts. We will have talks of one hour each on two parallel tracks.”

In today's tech-savvy world, hackers are in great demand by companies who hire them specifically for hacking purposes. "Through our convention, we would not be promoting the illegal aspects of hacking, but would be focussing on the technical and skills aspect. We are looking at presentations on Information Security," explained Tarun Chandel, Mumbai coordinator for the event.

Box:
What to expect at the convention:
- Amish Shah – The future of automated web application testing
- Ajit Hatti – Legiment techniques of IPS/ IDS evasion
- Chetan Gupta – Mining digital evidence in MS windows
- David Hulton – Faster PwninG assured: cracking crypto with FPGAs
- Dror Shalev – Crazy toaster: can home devices turn against us?
- Gaurav Saha – Vulnerabilities in VoIP products and services
- Rahul Mohandas – Analysis of adversarial code: the role of Malware kits
- Rohas Nagpal – 7 years of Indian IT Act: best cases
- Shreeraj Shah – Hacking web 2.0: Art and Science of vulnerability detection
- Sunil Arora – Backdoor 2.0: hacking Firefox to steal his web secrets
- Varun Sharma – Subtle security flaws: why you must follow basic principles of software security
Umesh Nagori – the future of automated web application testing
Visit http://www.clubhack.com/ for more details