First I would like to congratulate the organizers of this event (http://www.dojosec.com/). I have attended this a couple of times and its been amazing experience. If you live around DC metro area, I would suggest you block out 1st Thursday of the month 6pm to 10pm. The quality of speakers are great, in past they have had Johnny Long, Ron Gula, Marcus Ranum, Joe McCary ... and last night was no different. The line-up included our own Chris Gates but he had to pull out due to schedule conflict.

Last night line-up was as follows

Speaker: Rob Fuller (Mubix), Room362.com

Title: From Couch to Career in 80 hours

I know there has been a numerous presentations, books and stuff written on job hunting, resume building etc .. but  Rob with this talks brings in a unique prospective. He was able to provide the whole journey from start to finish with lots of very important tips most of us tend  to ignore or maybe think are small things which can be very important. I really enjoyed it and did pick up a few things.

Speaker: Joseph McCray

Title: Hacking Big Companies Without Getting Caught

Though Joe stepped in at the last minute to fill in for Chris he was amazing, Joe is an amazing presenter, has his own style and really engages the crowd. If you have not listened to him, I would highly recommend you should. This talk focused on identifying and bypassing enterprise class security solutions such as Load Balancers, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPSs), and Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). He touched on simple tricks and tips from old school which are still effective in this day and age.

Speaker Name: Matt Watchinski, Sourcefire

Title: 1 Byte , 5 Minutes , Holy Hot Tuna

In his presentation he discuss the recent flaw in Adobe Acrobat (and Acrobat Reader). The talk demonstrated the whole process from intelligence gathering through exploitation, mitigation and vulnerability disclosure. It was very en lighting and entreating with prospective from the trenches when vulnerability is discovered and what goes on behind the scenes.

Overall I was thankful attended and am already looking forward to the next one. All the details and videos are posted at

http://www.dojosec.com/

And for those who are not in the DC metro area they steam the event live.

Last but not the least if you are work or live in DC metro area, and looking for a SANS Sec 560 course at a slower pace (10 Weeks), there are a few seats still available for the Mentor session I am leading starting April 14th. Details can be found at

http://www.sans.org/mentor/details.php?nid=16298

That’s my rant for the day

VJ