It was a great honor and pleasure to give the keynote at 0xcon this year! Going back as far as 2017, 0xcon is an annual hacker conference taking place in November in Johannesburg, South Africa, focusing on security research. With absolutely no vendor booths or sponsorship announcements and a pure focus on technology, the conference is a gem in the heavily commoditized and commercialized space of information security conferences.

I had been asked by the organizers to speak about the benefits of security research. Puzzled at first as I realized that I had never asked myself if what I was doing created any benefits, followed by a mini identity crisis, I decided to first call a spade a spade and not speak about research, but rather about what it was called in my mind when I was first drawn to it: hacking. Having spent 20 years now hacking computers in various ways, and having experienced the culture it lives in, as well as its development over the years, I decided to take the audience on a tour of what I’d experienced along the way, reflecting on whether or not these experiences provided any sort of benefits - for myself, or anyone else.

The reality is that anybody who is truly drawn to hacking does not have much of a choice. Hacking to them is just awesome and remains awesome, and whether or not it is beneficial or completely destructive to oneself is rather secondary in that thinking.

The benefits really are largely the experience itself, which includes to experience the insane things that happen in the virtual world, but also, the underlying values and motivation of the people behind it. Hackers are digital counter-culture, and as we progress into an increasingly hostile world, resulting directly from the unhinged optimization for personal benefit, it becomes more important than ever to keep it alive.

I would like to thank the organizers and the audience for an amazing experience! You can find my slides here, and a video recording may eventually become available as well.

You can find the slides of my presentation here.