Being mad at a flat tire doesn’t put the spare on.

Being mad at a flat tire doesn’t put the spare on.

I remember a summer about 15 years ago when I was with my Grandfather somewhere in southern Illinois and his truck made that familiar flop…flop…flop noise of a flat tire.  He was either being lazy or trying to teach me a valuable lesson that day because I got to change the tire.

It was 115 degrees outside. I weighed all of 125 pounds. I didnt know how to change a flat tire.

I was mad.

He walked me through climbing under the truck to get the spare tire that was bolted to the bed down.

I was mad.

He walked me through loosening up the lug nuts. He walked me through jacking up truck. He walked me through taking the flat tire off.

I was mad.

Once I got the tire off the truck and on to the side of the road I kicked it. I don’t know why.  I was 16 years old and dumb is about all I can come up.

I was mad.

My grandfather then looked at me like I would look at an idiotic 16 year old today who just kicked a flat tire and said:

Being mad at a flat tire doesn’t put the spare on.

It didnt sink in at all that day. I finished putting the spare on. Got back in the truck and pouted all the way back to St.Louis.

I luckily don’t get many flat tires. I had a flat tire on Sunday afternoon and as I was waiting for my wife to come and pick up from the garage where I was getting it repaired I remember this as vividly as if it happened last month.

My grandfather passed away 7 years ago this month.  I miss him and his guidance nearly everyday. I just hope that I can take this great advice and apply it no matter what kind of flat tires life hands me.

PHDays

I spent the last week in Moscow speaking at PHDays that was organized by Positive Technologies.

Let me just start this review off by saying I don’t think I have ever been to a conference with as good of lineup, organization, or venue as PHDays had.

The venue was Digital October in Moscow and I don’t think there is anything comparable to it in America. They had huge monitors (40 feet x 15 feet), great technical staff, instant translation, HD online streaming and awesome speaker support.

It has to easily  be one of the 5 best security conferences in the world based solely on the talks that were done in English.  It had the developers of SQLMAP, W3AF and Mimikatz all speaking about their projects. It had Travis Goodspeed and Sylvain Munaut talking about physical hardware manipulation. Those were just the English talks, the Russian talks were just as good.

The CTF was also pretty awesome to watch. They had a dumpster diving challenge where the teams had to try to find an MD5 hash. I hadn’t seen that before in a CTF and thought it was genius.

They also gave away two A.R. Drones during the CTF to any team that could hack them. Along with a ATM hacking contest that I missed but would have loved to have seen.

When you see the CFP for PHDays 2013 open up you really should submit. You will be treated great and given an opportunity to meet a whole group of people who are really passionate about computer security. I made a great deal of new friends from Russia, The independent nation of Appalachia and Europe over the last week and will never forget this trip.

Trolled in Russia

An hilarious group of guys from a CTF team decided to stop by my PHDays talk and have a little fun.

I will have to say that this was one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time. After the talk I meet up with the guys and I now have a signed anonymous mask for my office.

5 things I learned in Moscow on day 3.

1. If you ever heard a rapper talk about a car in a rap song I have seen it, and possible almost been hit by it, in the last three days.

2. There used to be a pool where this church stands.

3. In old Russian video games Americans are the bad guys.

4. Moscow has the best Sherbert I have ever ate.

5. They have rooms full of beanbags.