Black in Cyber Winter Conference (BICWC2021)

This past weekend I attended the BICWC. What did I have planned for the conference? Nothing. lol There was a mobile talk by Jasmine that I was looking forward to but past that I had no expectations. This lead to me doing stupid things like signing up for the harder of the 3 CTFs and then a OSINST challenge. 🙃

I sat in on some other talks through out the 3 days but this is the first conference I've seen so many poc subject experts speak. I know we exist because...well I exist and I'm internet friends with a few, but when you do in-person conferences you sometimes can't tell. I got 3 pages of good notes that I can take action on and I'm super excited to get back into my security "bag".

So I'm sure you want to know about the competitions right? Fine! lol

The socks ctf...no clue why it was challenging but I'm random and didn't want to pick the easier ones. I didn't do too bad either. I think I tied for a place but I didn't see the final score. The ctf was 12hrs I think which I didn't know. I don't think it mattered though because after fighting with apple to get xcode downloaded and such I was really tired. I ended up going to sleep around 1am and woke up feeling refreshed.

Now...the osint challenge...I really don't know a thing about this other than to sneak getting in. I totally didn't do this tho. 😭😭😭 So a few things happened in this challenge. I seriously didn't know what to do so I assumed I'd just be doing normal OPSEC on socials. I was kinda right and at one point I was in first place (image at end). What happened? Life. I didn't know how long this event went (I really need to read more) and I had an appointment to get to. Now looking back I should have taken a computer with me, but I found out the event only had an hour left at that point.

I'm going to pause here and say that a few flags had you call people. Mind you that your trying to blend in. I find the helpdesk number nervous af and when the person answers I go "you got a flag". Yeeeeaaa...don't do this. lol The person chuckled and went along with faking it (bless them). So back to my tragic fall to 3rd place...right before the time was up they extended the challenge 30mins. I had to options: go home or finish my todo list. I decided to complete my todo list since I was out.

Anyway all this to say I had a lot of fun doing things I never thought about. I highly recommend that you attend conferences in things your interested in if funds allow. You will make friends, learn things, and maybe even find competitions that push you to expand your skillset. Well I'm going to end by linking you to the thing that consumed my mind the entire OSINT challenge. Enjoy being pissed off. lol