The annual PHdays festival, which I attended on Thursday, ended last night I was finally…

The annual festival ended last night PHdays which I was on Thursday

I was finally able to take a break from work and relax a little, which means it’s time to fulfill my promise and tell you more about the activities that I visited specifically. Let's go 🥂

To begin with, after receiving my name badge, I met with some of my current work colleagues. Together we decided to go to Standoff. I already sent photographs and videos in a previous post, which also showed models of various urban and industrial infrastructure on small stands. This is what he is

This is a real cyber exercise. Remember when I talked about color teams in information security? Here, the blues and reds are competing here 🤓

During the competition, red teams are divided into two clans and attack the systems of virtual states - State F and State S. For example, they try to steal bank customer data, hack a traffic light system, or stop the operation of an oil refinery. For implemented attacks and events, teams earn points, and the best four teams of the winning clan compete for 1st place in the battle

The task of blue teams - information security specialists - is to identify, investigate and respond to attacks.

The infrastructure of virtual states is reflected on physical models (which I just filmed for you) . Each industry has its own layout with buildings and objects that react to attacks much like in real life: luggage piles up on an airport belt, trains derail, power goes out and oil overflows a tank. 😳

It was very interesting to listen and watch the participants. There they gave me a brochure with a QR code for registering in the quest. But I was already in a hurry to meet with my former colleagues from Solar, so I decided not to linger, but simply moved on 🧠

The next stand that I visited was the stand of Gazprombank, which was suddenly located in the Baumanka tent, and hidden among other universities. There I met my former colleagues and even a classmate with whom we studied together at the university. Together with him, we decided to participate in Gazprombank competitions. First, they took a test on their knowledge of basic concepts in information security, then they found vulnerabilities in a web application ( it was very interesting, because the guys got really excited and did a really cool job ), and then answered questions in the quiz. As a result, we spent the points we collected for all 3 competitions on merch. 🙂

After a long and interesting conversation with colleagues about life, prof. national successes, personal relationships and much more, my classmate and I, already playing mini golf, saw a hefty T-bank stand. Naturally, we immediately moved towards him. At the entrance we were given forms where we had to affix stamps for victories in competitions. For different merch it was required to collect a different number of stamps ( after our participation, T-bank became poorer by one Panama hat, a belt bag and two tickets for free coffee ) 🤩

We took part in an information security test; determined what was written by a real person and what was written by a neural network; Using recordings of real calls, they tried to understand who was calling: a real employee or a scammer. It was very interesting 🙏

After that, we had many more different activities, but one post here is not enough, and I don’t want to make a series. As practice shows, not all of my subscribers like a large number of posts in one day. I can only say that I don’t regret attending PHdays this year at all. Naturally, I will be in the next one too ( and maybe it will also be possible to give a report ) 🥳

One of my subscribers gave me a short interview about how he was able to get an electronic badge at the festival. What is it, how could you get it, etc. - in the next post 😉

#information_security #phdays