“Investing in cybersecurity today will protect our freedom of speech, the existence of free markets and most important the freedom of secure online social interaction.” Guy Shalev, Microsoft Garage – Israel
In the second year for BlueHat IL, a special edition of Microsoft’s leading cybersecurity conference, The Garage – Israel team rolled up its sleeves to hack with top professionals in cyber-security in Tel Aviv, Israel. Microsoft’s Israel Development Center houses some of the brightest experts on Windows security, hiring many talented men and women who served as programmers in Israel Defense Forces cyber elite units.
Israel is also home to numerous cybersecurity start-ups formed by these very same individuals. Israel has historically heavily invested in developing means to protect its citizens and as a natural extension, has become a leader in research and prevention of cyber security threats.
“With important aspects of human existence like money, politics and even social interactions turning from physical to digital, it is only natural that wars will also move to the cyber arena. Investing in cybersecurity today will protect our freedom of speech, the existence of free markets and most important the freedom of secure online social interaction.” shares Shalev.
With 23 esteemed speakers delivering 18 exciting and insightful talks about the latest threat detection, exploits, and mitigations to surface in the cybersecurity world, BlueHat IL attendees heard from influential minds such as Microsoft CTO of Security Gunter Ollman, Intel security researcher Marion Marschalek, and Google Project Zero security researcher James Forshaw, among others. Mystery keynote speakers Daniel Gruss, Moritz Lipp, and Michael Schwarz from Graz University of Technology shared their team story on the discovery of CPU vulnerabilities Spectre and Meltdown that recently shook up the security world.
These sessions are publicly available for anyone to watch. Get the speaker abstracts,session videos and slides or go directly to the Microsoft Israel R&D YouTube channel.
Shalev was heavily involved in both the 2017 and 2018 BlueHat IL events and is the lead to create and deliver hands-on Microsoft Garage workshops for hundreds of participants. This years cornerstone project, BlueBadge workshops, was a raging success.
Shalev and team designed the BlueBadge Workshops to combine the best of gaming, hacking, and making with a Raspberry Pi Zero equipped with OLED display and a fully functioning game pad. This BlueBadge device – an open software and open hardware initiative – is a portable hacking tool and standalone arcade machine that participants utilized to hack a car, run arcade game emulators and simulators, and booted up Kali Linux in an introductory exercise to ethical hacking and penetration tests.
If you like to build boards, create your own BlueBadge with The Garage BlueBadge board design files on Github and image files on Azure.
Follow @BlueHatIL on twitter for all the latest news and updates, and view event photos on the Microsoft Israel R&D Center Facebook Page.
Story by Meixia Huang
