Dragons Everywhere: The 26th Chaos Communication Congress, Part 2

Day 2 and Night 2 of the 26th Chaos Communication Congress is over, so it’s time for a short update on what you are missing here.

This year the Congress is organized as a distributed event: Many local Hacker Spaces have joined the network at Berlin Conference Center, giving access to resources and talks to visitors. Check out the Dragons Everywhere Wiki at 26c3 for more info. And of course there are still the live streams of the talks available.

One highlight was certainly an update of the current debate around the Vorratsdatenspeicherung (“data retention”). CCC-spokesperson Constanze Kurz expects a favorable ruling against the current laws by the highest German court. This may have an EU-wide impact.

At the same time (and thank goodness there were streams available!) was Collin Mulliner’s talk about fuzzing smart phones and some of his (and Charlie Miller’s) findings.

Felix ”FX” Lindner changed sides: In a talk covering defense instead of breaking things, he demonstrated the security problems that come with Flash and released a tool for sandboxing .swf files to prevent a class of Flash exploits called Blitzableiter (“lightning rod”). His tool is still work in progress but looks very promising already.

And to finish the day there was the Phonoelit Party at c-base, featuring Mumpi, Vela, and Illo. Another great event!

Of course, this selection is just my personal preference. Make sure to check the schedule for talks that interest you.