Black Hat USA & DEFCON 2021 Coverage on LinuxSecurity: What You Need to Know

To say that it’s an exciting time in the cybersecurity community is an understatement! Two of the most prestigious cybersecurity conferences - Black Hat USA 2021 and DEF CON - are rapidly approaching, featuring an impressive list of trainings and presentations.

LinuxSecurity will be covering Black Hat USA and DEF CON on social media, as well as interviewing a few renowned speakers and trainers from this year’s lineup, and then wrapping things up by summarizing the key findings and takeaways from this year’s events in a comprehensive feature article.

Here’s what you need to know about these events and their coverage on LinuxSecurity, so you can stay up-to-date and informed on the latest cybersecurity trends, findings and insights - even if you won’t be among the lucky Black Hat USA and DEFCON attendees this year.

Background Information

Celebrating its 24th anniversary this year, Black Hat USA features briefings and trainings taught by experts from around the globe, providing offensive and defensive hackers of all levels with invaluable opportunities for firsthand technical skill-building. This year, Black Hat is excited to present a unique hybrid event experience. The event will begin with four days of real-time online Virtual Trainings (July 31-August 3), followed by the two-day main conference (August 4-5), which will be both a Virtual (online) Event and a Live, In-Person Event at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. A detailed schedule of Trainings and Briefings can be found on the Black Hat website.

Black Hat USA 2021 is immediately followed by DEF CON , an infamous hacker conference held in Las Vegas each year. The event consists of several tracks of speakers with expertise in the realm of computer security and hacking, as well as cybersecurity challenges and competitions (known as hacking “wargames”).

LinuxSecurity Featured Experts

LinuxSecurity will be speaking with multiple cybersecurity experts who are teaching courses at Black Hat USA 2021 including:

Ryan MacDougall

Chief Operating Officer, Social-Engineer, LLC

Ryan MacDougall is a subject matter expert in the areas of network penetration testing, application security, protocol analysis, as well as social engineering. Ryan directed technical operations, as well as built and secured large networks for the financial and telecommunications industries, whose area of focus covers 6 countries, consisting of 3 data centers and 8 regional offices. During his 10 years running operations in a company that grew through M&A activities, acquiring, integrating, as well as standardizing operations, Ryan developed a deep understanding as well as insight into fundamental flaws present in a wide variety of enterprise environments. Ryan MacDougall is presently the Chief Operating Officer and Open Source Intelligence trainer for Social-Engineer, LLC. In addition, he runs operations during penetration tests and exercises with clients, as well as managing client relationships. Additionally, Ryan is also a multiyear Blackhat conference trainer and DEFCON SEVillage speaker, regarding social engineering as well as, open source intelligence gathering. Ryan will be presenting Practical OSINT for Social Engineers at Black Hat 2021.

Madhu Akula 

Cloud Native Security Architect

Madhu Akula is the creator of Kubernetes Goat, an intentionally vulnerable-by-design Kubernetes Cluster used to learn and practice Kubernetes Security. He is also a published author and Cloud Native security researcher with extensive experience. Madhu is an active member of the international security, DevOps, and Cloud Native communities (null, DevSecOps, AllDayDevOps, etc). He holds industry certifications like OSCP (Offensive Security Certified Professional), CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator), etc. Madhu frequently speaks and runs training sessions at security events and conferences around the world including DEFCON (24, 26 & 27), BlackHat USA (2018 & 19), USENIX LISA (2018 & 19), O'Reilly Velocity EU 2019, GitHub Satellite 2020, Appsec EU (2018 & 19), All Day DevOps (2016, 17, 18, 19 & 20), DevSecCon (London, Singapore, Boston), DevOpsDays India, c0c0n(2017, 18), Nullcon (2018, 19), SACON 2019, Serverless Summit, null and multiple others. His research has identified vulnerabilities in over 200 companies and organizations including Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, eBay, AT&T, WordPress, NTOP and Adobe, and he is credited with multiple CVE's, Acknowledgements, and rewards. He is co-author of Security Automation with Ansible2 (ISBN-13: 978-1788394512), which is listed as a technical resource by Red Hat Ansible. Also, Madhu is a technical reviewer of the Learn Kubernetes Security book published by Packt. He won 1st prize for building an Infrastructure Security Monitoring solution at the InMobi flagship hackathon among 100+ engineering teams. Madhu will be presenting A Practical Approach to Breaking & Pwning Kubernetes Clusters at Black Hat USA 2021.

Jay Beale 

CTO, InGuardians

Jay Beale works on Kubernetes and cloud native security, both as a professional threat actor and in his open source work. He is the architect of the Peirates attack tool for Kubernetes & the @Bustakube CTF cluster. He created Bastille Linux and the widely used CIS Linux scoring tool. Since 2000, he has led training classes on Linux & Kubernetes security at the Black Hat, RSA, CanSecWest and IDG confs. An author and speaker, Beale has contributed to nine books, two columns and over 100 public talks. He is a co-founder and CTO of the infosec consulting company InGuardians. Jay will be presenting A Purple Team View: Attacking and Defending Linux, Docker and Kubernetes at Black Hat USA 2021.

We Want to Provide You with the Information You Want to Know

Have questions about the upcoming Black Hat USA or DEF CON conferences, or an experience, story, or report to share? Is there a topic that will be covered at these events that you are particularly interested in? Is there something you would like to ask one of the presenters we will be interviewing? Let us know on Twitter and we will try our best to provide you with the information you are looking for!