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April 21, 2021
Screen showing BSides CBR 2021 intro in auditorium

Mos’ BSides CBR 2021 Conference Wrap-Up

by | Conferences

Last weekend was BSides CBR 2021 and me, boo and our parents went. BSides actually started a bit early for us because Kylie sent our BSides badges to us early so we could start playing around with them. Thanks so much Kylie!!!! ❤️

It was a long car ride from Sydney but at last we made it to Canberra!!! On our way through to our hotel, we dropped of Booey and Wheelz (mum) at the hacker chic party where all the girls that were coming to BSides went. After dropping off the girls, me and aft3rmath (dad) went to the Crowne Plaza hotel, signed in and dropped off all our stuff. We then chilled for a bit.

Anyway, enough about my life story, let’s get onto the topic of BSides Melbourne. Wait. Not Melbourne, Canberra. Yeah, BSides Canberra! ????

BSides CBR 2021 – Day 1

So, the next day we had to wake up early. But it was worth it because it was the FIRST DAY OF BSIDES!!! We went around the sneaky way out the back of our hotel and walked up to BSides. It was a 4-minute trip, but we got there in the end. The line was so long, and we thought that it would take so long but we got in within a few minutes! And then over the loudspeaker boomed “session is about to start please find your rooms”. It did that 3 times and eventually, we went to the hall and sat in the second row. Kylie and Silvio (the conference organisers) came up on stage and announced the conference officially open and about the competitions and how there were no villages which was sad 🙁 And then after they finished the first speaker came on stage.

We watched the first talk and then went to go get a drink from the café (water 🙁 ) and then sat down to watch the next talk. I didn’t really understand the talk, so I did some *important* stuff on my iPad.

10 Run Sausage Run Tips You Need to Know | Heavy.com

My important stuff – Sausage Run!

After that talk was done, we went for some early lunch. We went to a place called café. Yeah, strange name right! Anyway, they had some amazing food, and I had a huge cocktail. Wait not a cocktail. A mocktail called the Full Moon Mocktail. It was so good and for my main, I had a chicken schnitzel burger. It was one of my greatest lunches I had ever had.

After lunch, we went up to the back this time instead of the front. The seats were much comfier than the ones up front. Again, the talk didn’t make much sense so me and Booey went exploring around the CTF looking for friends. Sadly, all of our friends were hiding from us and couldn’t find anyone.

Competition Area

We went back to our parents and sat down. We then asked if our parents could get a Fanta and a Lemonade for me and boo and they said yes. We were then pleased and released the parents back to their seat’s. After the talk was over, we went back to our hotel to recharge our devices ready for dinner.

First, we went to a bar which we were allowed into and ordered our drinks (Mocktails again). Me and Booey had one each but Booey didn’t like hers, so I got two. Yay! We then went to dinner and Pat (our friend) ordered. We shouldn’t have trusted him on ordering. It was way to much food ???? I only got up to what I thought was the main meal but apparently it was just appetizers. That’s the last time I’m trusting Pat on ordering.

After that very large dinner we went to an after-party at an Arcade called Token. There was a Street fighter and a Daytona trophy up for grabs. We then played some Pinball and some Street Fighter (I thrashed Booey so hard) then I faced a friend of mine called Wayne and he thrashed me. We then played Daytona while they were doing the Championship and this time Booey thrashed me for once 😉

We then went back to our hotel with Wayne, Holly and Nick (the one with the pretty hair).

BSides CBR 2021 – Day 1

At the start of the day, Kylie and Silvio went up on stage again and announced day two. Exciting!!! Since the first speaker was from Queensland and COVID issues she had cancelled her travel so couldnt be there. So Silvio did a talk about Computer Hardware and IoT. It was an interesting talk and was really well prepared even though he only had 1 week notice. Good job Silvio!

Next talk we saw was this ‘hacker’ called Alex 😉 His talk was so interactive and hilarious. His friend asked him to get info from the boarding pass of the former prime minister and he even talked to the former prime minister too which was cool. You can read all about it on his blog.

I then did some more *important* business in the next talk because that made no sense to me at all, but it would have made sense to other people. We then went to morning tea but they had no cold drinks or food, so we ended up going back to the conference and getting a Fanta for me.

Later after one more talk everyone had lunch except me because I didn’t feel like any lunch, instead, I got another drink this time something healthy. After everyone had finished their lunch we went back to the conference with Pat and Wayne.

Me and Booey went off to see if we could get free shirts because why not. We found out that Privasec had a wrong order with the T-shirts and there were 10 boxes of just small!

Me and Booey were lucky. We got 4 each. We then looked and I found a medium which I gave to a friendly man who gave me a lock pick in return. FREE LOCK PICK!!! I gave a small one to my dad. He would look SO funny in it!

We then sat down waiting for the 4:00 P.M. talk but instead of sitting down we went exploring and found Aston. If you don’t know who Aston is he is an awesome kid who is a kid.  We then went up to where the T-shirts were and went into a little room where we watched memes on my laptop.

Awkward Look Monkey Puppet | Know Your Meme

After that we went through an alleyway up the side of the conference building where the stage was and almost went through that door until someone came out of it. We ran so fast. We then went for it again and ran all the way through the alley to the end of it where the security guards were blocking it. We then went back to our apartment where we charged our devices ready for dinner. I still didn’t feel so good, so I didn’t eat much. We had a Malaysian street food-style diner. I ordered calamari and didn’t eat much of it but it was very tasty.

We then went back to the apartment and went to bed. BSides CBR 2021 was awesome and I’m so excited to go next year!!!

Mos

Mos

Mos aka MrOldSkinny, loves to hack things together whether it be hardware, software or a combination of both! When he isn’t doing crazy hacks you will find him picking locks, tampering with tamper-proof devices, and finding weaknesses in security controls. All the cybers will be his!

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