By Pia Perthen, Sports Editor
On April Fool’s Day, four members of Saint Leo University’s PenTest Club were broadening their horizons at the BSides Tampa at the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida (USF) campus. Fortunately, they did not get pranked and, instead, learned a lot of valuable knowledge about various cybersecurity topics.
The BSides Tampa is an Information Technology Security Conference designed to offer an open platform for all interested professionals or enthusiasts in this field to collaborate, exchange ideas, and form connections with others. According to BSides, this conference is a 100 percent volunteer-organized event; the tickets for students and faculty with a current .edu email address were $30 and, for the general audience, $45.
The tickets included access to all speakers, Discord servers, villages, and sponsorship area; additionally, it includes a BSides Tampa Shirt, a Badge (which can light up), and access to Happy Hour. Additionally, specific interest workshops and trainings were also offered the day before the conference, March 31, for an additional $5 ticket fee.
Rob Bryan, a senior majoring in cybersecurity and member of the PenTest club, was able to attend such a training session. Bryan attended the Password Cracking course and in the four-hour class he learned how to use software to identify the various hashing algorithms.
“We also learned how to take the password hashes and decrypt them,” said Bryan. “I was really interested in it before the course, and it made me even more eager to learn about password security.”
At BSides, a wide variety of speakers and presentations can be found, and it is incredibly easy to find talks that one is interested in since there are so many options, primarily focused on cybersecurity topics.
The conference offered seven different tracks with various speakers. The tracks were named Offense/Red Team Track, Security Operations Track, Audit/Compliance/Risk Track, Offense/Privacy/Vulns Track, ML/Crypto/Health/DarkWeb/Exfil Track, CISCO Track, and Career Track.
“My favorite speaker was Kevin Westin,” said Naomi Nash, who is pursuing her graduate degree in cybersecurity. “It was exciting to hear how he joined the cybersecurity field and used his OSINT skills to help law enforcement find stolen electronics as well as have his software that he considers a ‘legal botnet’ be adopted by the ICE HSI CCC Child Exploitation Investigation unit to help find trafficked children.”
Apart from the various speaker options, different villages were offered: HAM Village, where the focus was on radio technology; Lock Pick Village, in which locks could have cracked to receive prizes; Network Hacking Village, this village attracted local networking enthusiasts; the STEAM Village, which focused on robotics and where different companies, like Tampa Hackerspace, were open for questions and information; and finally, the BSides offered a Neon Temple Room where competitive ethical hackers could demonstrate their skills in Capture the Flag Competitions.
The PenTest club members had big success in the Lock Pick Village, as they were able to crack multiple locks and received prizes that are helpful for further lock-picking activities – ethical activities, of course!
The STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) village provided more information about the Tampa Hackerspace, a non-profit, volunteer-run makerspace. It was formed for people to learn skills through classes and to access tools and equipment through a community of makers.
“I liked the STEAM village the best since I have never heard about this organization, so it was exciting to learn about a place that I could go to learn more skills as I advance in the cybersecurity field,” said Bryan.
In addition to all the offered tracks and villages, the conference had a sponsor area where not only many free small gifts were able to be collected, but also offered opportunities to form connections with organizations and companies involved in the information technology field. For instance, AWS, AppOmni, Cyber Florida, and many others had information booths with small giveaways.
“The sponsor section was cool,” said Evan Frantz, a junior majoring in cybersecurity and a member of the PenTest club. “I thought the monthly subscription boxes that one company did were an interesting way to learn about electronics.”
The conference started at 8a.m. and had its closing remarks starting at 3:15p.m.
“The villages also have really cool activities to be able to get hands-on experiences, such as lock picking, and with many cybersecurity companies and professionals to talk to, it’s a great place to network and get your name out there for jobs and internships. The free stickers, shirts, and other goodies were just a plus!” summarized Nash, reflecting on a truly educational experience at the Tampa BSides Conference.
