RSA and BSides San Francisco

Next week, almost everyone with a stake in or an opinion on IT security will be in San Francisco for the annual


RSA Conference

.

I will be there as well, and although

Virus Bulletin

doesn’t have a booth at the event, I am looking forward to meeting old and new friends and discussing

our tests

,

our upcoming conference

, or simply the state of security in general.

I will also be giving a talk at

RSA

:

How Broken Is Our Crypto Really?

. In the 50-minute talk, I will look at a number of cryptographic protocols that have supposedly been broken in recent years (including RC4, SSLv3 and SHA-1). By looking at how the attacks against these protocols work, I will try to answer the question: what does “broken” mean in these cases?

While

RSA

is often seen as a marketing event — and if the number of PR emails I’ve received over the past few weeks are anything to go by, I would say that indeed it partly is — there are many interesting and often quite technical talks on the show’s

agenda

.

But for more technical security content,


BSides

San Francisco



, which is held on the Sunday and Monday before

RSA,

is the place to be.

I will also be giving a talk at

BSides

:

Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Those Who are Afraid of Mathematics

. The talk will be a non-technical introduction to the fascinating and relevant subject of elliptic curve cryptography.

Do say hello if you see me in San Francisco — or

drop me an email

if you’re going to be there and want to chat.