All I want to know is, who comes up with this stuff?
See, I've been waiting.....and waiting......and waiting......for the sessions from RSA2008 to hit the web, so we can watch and listen and absorb or whatever. There's a lot of people who couldn't make it who have also asked me if / when my own presentation would be available to listen to. Last year, RSA seemed to be pretty open about who could get their hands on the talks (Hell, we still have one complete with funky Flash thing here).
Now? I get an Email from the RSA organisers last night pointing me to this page, with the following genius idea:
The information and ideas discussed at RSA Conference 2008 will have an impact on the information security industry for years to come. Be sure to capture all of the discussions by replaying the session recordings from this year's Conference. (Free for 2008 Full Conference attendees, $395 for non-attendees)
Wow, yes! What a brilliant idea! We'll have "an impact on the security industry for years to come" by.....letting all the same people who saw the talks originally watch them again!
Wooo!
Also, WTF and doh. Let's be honest and put the hyperbole aside for a second - nothing talked about at RSA will "have an impact on security for years to come", because nobody cares. It was a bunch of talks about stuff, and now it's over. Some were good, some were bad, same as it ever was. But hamming it up with over-the-topness just so we can justify charging lots of money to let people hear it who couldn't make it / afford it? Man, that sucks. That sucks ass, and is a terrible, exclusionary idea.
If there was anything of worth, of interest spoken about at RSA, how are we helping to spread those ideas by chaining them to full conference passes or extortionate amounts of cash after the event is long gone?
And why is it always just about the "security industry" anyway? There's a whole variety of people and initiatives that likely fall outside that narrow definition (purely because they're not running around yelling BUY THE BOX!) and yet they're just as active, just as important to the security scene as anyone else.
But of course, they didn't pay stupid amounts of money to attend and so don't count. Excuse me while I roll my eyes. How many people attending these conferences are only there because their company paid for them to go in the first place? And how many of those people wouldn't come within a hundred feet of security conferences if they actually had to pay up themselves?
Nobody can claim access to 365 session recordings for $395 is good value for money, because nobody in their right mind is going to listen to three hundred and sixty five sessions unless they are clinically insane.
Anyone with any interest in RSA2008 that didn't go is more likely to want to hear the odd handful of sessions - and here's a breaking newsflash, they are NOT going to pay out four hundred bucks just to hear them. I don't believe RSA have a "reduced fee" anywhere to listen to (say) five talks, but meh, even that would suck.
I really doubt half the people at RSA on free Full Conference Passes (courtesy of their company) would complain if people who didn't attend got to hear the talks for free after the event. Again, by this point nobody cares, right? It's now just a bunch of talks at some conference somewhere, and everyone is now too busy gearing up for the next conference in a few weeks or months time.
And if someone argues that it's not good form to have the great unwashed masses listening in for free when all those companies had to stump up tons of cash for full conference passes? Well, too bad for all those companies. Surely half the fun of the full pass is the chance to hear people speak in person that you always wanted to see present twenty feet away from you - not simply possession and apparent ownership of the words that came out of their mouth.
To me, security is all about protecting those same "great unwashed masses" with as much vigor and force as the companies at RSA devote to protecting enterprise and business customers - great unwashed masses that (currently) don't have a hope in Hell of hearing talks that might actually contribute to making them consider security a little more in their day to day lives.
It all seems a bit greedy and possessive to me, but then I only spoke at RSA.
The two most annoying things I always get asked at security conferences
RSA 2008 was always going to be a tough one to pull off - while most people were probably going there to dazzle everyone with the latest cutting edge exploits, cryptography-tech and innovations in the technology field, I was going to show up and talk about kids hacking things.
Already off to a tricky start, things were made more complicated by the structure dictated by such an enterprise - throw in all the juicy stuff right at the start to keep peoples attention, and you risk having nothing interesting to whip out at the end. Keep it too general at the start, and you risk incurring the wrath of the OMG KIDS HACKING ON THE INTERNET? OH, WOW REALLY? THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE NEWS NOW? brigade.
Of course, the news isn't that kids are "hacking on the Internet" - the news is that nobody is still paying it much (if any) attention. Why is that? It's a tricky question to answer.
I did have a few people come up to me while I was at the FaceTime booth who fired the following at me, and I usually always get something along these lines (indeed, one guy got particularly stroppy with me for no good reason at InfoSec Europe after asking me the first one). It used to irritate me, but now it just makes my eyes roll and probably glaze over a bit. I might start to think about shopping I need to purchase. A funky song from yesteryear might autoplay in my mind while I jig from side to side in a sexy yet creepy fashion. Who knows.
1. Sounds interesting, but what is the value to your company?
Well, in terms of specific value to "my company" (and indeed, all companies), anything interesting and productive is good publicity, and good publicity = good news for any company, right? If nobody knows who you are, they're less likely to buy your stuff. If everyone knows who you are, you've achieved some form of visibility and so might sell slightly more stuff. If what you do is worthwhile and productive, there's an increased chance people might take your equipment for a test drive. Anyone that can't see the obvious benefits of that, just doesn't get it.
The other side-effect of lots of publicity is that scumbags the world over - and those scumbags can be anyone from the 17 year old kid in his bedroom to the nastiest of kiddy pr0n creators - don't like a light shone in their face. It all helps, and it all goes a little way towards people actively working in security one less headache to deal with.
These people also tend to forget that it's not just a case of shutting down some websites and that's it. If you start with a person, you inevitably end up with their interesting and unique infection files which can then be protected against. If you start with the file, you can usually trace it back to a fame-hungry mofo.
There's no reason why we can't have our cake and eat it, and no reason why we can't simultaneously look to grab the files for detections AND attempt to shut down the people making those files permanently. In that sense, we're doing what anyone else in security is doing - providing detections - and also trying to ensure they don't keep pumping out infection files all day long. Anything done after grabbing the files and providing detections is a bonus. That's a benefit to everybody, and I'm interested in providing a benefit to everybody - not justthe parent company.
Why does "value" always have to equate to tangible amounts of cash on the table? If it's done purely to help people, does that suddenly lose all worth? Is it only relevant if I'm rolling around in a swimming pool stuffed with hundred dollar bills or something?
I'm sure the future victims of some credit card scammer who won't now be stung because we already shut him down three weeks ago will see the value in it, or the people using some social networking site that won't be hit because we already shut down the clowns producing the latest scam, and so on and so on. To me, people complaining about the dollah dollah bill, y'all worth of things not being entirely evident by "simply" shutting down wannabes, hackers, crackers and God knows who else have it all back to front.
In case they forgot, I apply the same "burn it all down to the ground" method for everyone from Adware vendors to hackers in the Middle-East and everyone inbetween. Was it an issue then? Or does it only become an issue because people can't immediately see the worth in slicing up wave after wave of script kiddies?
I mean, it's not like many of these kids will be doing bigger, better and nastier things in five years time or less if left unchecked, right? It's not like they're gearing up to be the next wave of assclowns who people like me will eventually have to chase down anyway, right?What? What's that? They WILL?
Oh.
The next question I had thrown at me from one or two guys was something similar to this:
2. I used to hack back in the day, and I'm still on the scene though I don't do anything anymore. You shouldn't call these kids hackers, because it's an insult to all of us real hackers who were all about exploration and fighting the system etc etc (insertpartabouthowtheyactuallyusedtohackthingsanywayhere).
My response to that was, you're unhappy about them being lumped in under the semantically awesome term "hacker", you claim to still be "on the scene", you probably read articles in 2600 magazine about the "true worth and nobility of hackers" and yet don't actually do anything to steer them towards your ideal goal of "hackers not being into illegal things as such and actually being all about exploration and freedom of expression"?
Wow, then EPIC FAIL FOR YOU.
Anyway, ramble over. I just want you to know what not to ask me at conferences (along with, "Did you enjoy the flight". That one sucks too).
You can jump over to Spywareguide and see an overview of the session we did at RSA last week (with links to a bunch of articles), and also click here for as many pictures as you can shake a stick at.
Incidentally, many of you have asked me about this TShirt.
Sorry, I had it custom made. That's right, I go into TShirt shops and ask for junk like this. To the guy that came up and asked me where I got it? I admit it, I felt like I was kicking a puppy when you asked me what booth you could get it from. To the randomly selected booth that suddenly had some dude come up and bug you for a "Tonight we dine" shirt, I apologise.
Well not really, it was pretty funny.
Eventually, RSA will (hopefully) provide a link to the full talk - when they do, I'll link to it and all that jazz. Wish they'd get a move on, they were a lot quicker linking to this stuff last year...
British Airways: Redefining "Sucktastic" for the 21st Century
I've arrived home, no thanks to BA. Already having endured the wonders of BA287, you can imagine my reaction at seeing this upon arrival at SFO:
.....oh BA, not again. Even before checking in, some dude was handing out "We're sorry, but.." letters so I knew it was gonna be bad. As it turned out, the plane was indeed delayed for a stupidly long time but we didn't plunge out of the sky - hey, bonus.
Of course, this meant I had to be ultra-snappy when getting to Terminal 5 to ensure I didn't miss my connecting flight. Imagine my dismay, then, when it turned out that the following snazzy electronic poster:
.....would turn out to be spectacularly incorrect.
As soon as you get to the departures lounge, there's no indication of where you're supposed to go. Do I stay in the same terminal? Do I have to catch one of those bus things to the other buildings down the road somewhere?
No idea. Sadly, I made the fatal mistake of asking British Airways staff. Before you knew it, they'd sent me downstairs to the bit where you catch the bus where I was told "Terminal 1" by some guy who could barely speak English. Not entirely convinced, I asked the woman at the Terminal 1 bus departure gate only to be told "Terminal 4".
Well holy crap, SOMEONE tell me where to catch the damn plane. Can't be that hard, can it?
As it turns out, yes. Yes, it can. Not long after the guy who told me Terminal 1 mocked me with a "Why could you possibly want to go upstairs?" type comment, someone else came down and apologised profusely because......the plane was leaving upstairs from Terminal 5, and there was no way back up the escalator.
A few minutes of shouting later, and they let me go back up in a freight elevator of some description, but of course it was too late and my plane was already flying off into the distance. I did feel better giving the Terminal 1 guy the two finger salute, but not by much - especially when it turned out that the next plane would be something like FIVE HOURS LATER (of course, it was delayed severely which meant a grand total of seven hours of swearing and ranting but it's entirely academic by this point).
Even trying to use a phone to let people know you weren't dead was an exercise in futility. Approaching the helpdesk (no more than ten feet away from a non-working payphone), this is how it all went down:
Me: Hi, are there any phones working yet?
Some stupid woman: Sorry?
Me: When I flew out last week, none of your payphones were working and I'm guessing it's still the same?
Some stupid woman: We're having problems at Terminal 5? . . . . . . . . . . . .
Well, BA ain't getting one over on me again. Spying the first class lounge off in the distance (and watching my fellow cheap-seat passengers being turned away with hopeful cries of "but I have extra legroom seats!"), a quick burst of the old "walk backwards while saying goodbye" trick later and I was confronted with free food, booze and all the comfy seating I could handle. I know it looks like I'm hiding under a table in the first picture, but I swear I'm not:
After stuffing my face with all the pasta, noodles and muffins I could cram into my gob I started looking round for something a little more fun:
Oh, free booze? Don't mind if I do. I pretty much nuked the free drinks bar. Well actually, all the free drinks bars. Then I made all their free Internet access Terminals look like this:
Aside from tales of lost luggage, some of them linked to the BA287 flight writeup from the week before, so I'm sure they appreciated that too. In fact, I made sure lots of articles like this, this and this were popping up all over their desktops. Enjoy, BA, enjoy. It's all for you, baby.
I finally arrived home God knows how many hours after the whole shambles started, and can't say I was surprised to see a pile of people stuck at my final destination asking where their luggage had gone:
Someone at British Airways needs a good kick to the face. A sustained and brutal beating, actually. Cries of "Don't Taze me, bro" will only have the exact opposite effect. Not only will I never fly with them again, I'm happily going to encourage people not to fly with them either.
...yep, I finally got it back. Of course, I fly back today to Terminal 5 so I'll probably lose the bloody thing again. It was a teary-eyed reunion, but with no sexytime because that'd be weird.
Alex E and myself hanging out at the Sunbelt booth. They really need to dress up as Ninjas to pimp their Ninja product thingy though. That would rock.
...huh. I think they have their prize order back to front.
...apparently we are all at risk from naked guys painted silver spray painting your walls.
I think. No idea what the Hell is going on there.
Whack a Fraudster? Oh, YES. Three guys had to drag me away when I started swinging baseball bats, but it's all good. I'll wrap up the RSA posts once I'm back home, so expect the next article sometime in 2016.
Last night I attended the SCMagazine Awards Ceremony, held in the Hilton in San Fransisco. It's very fancy and has lots of tables with fancy dudes and fancy chicks eating fancy food.
Not everything thrown my way went exactly to plan, of course. Check it out, this thing looks like it escaped from Day of the Triffids:
Ah, your pumping vegetable heart has arrived, Sir. Excellent choice.
We even had a presenter who looked a bit like Ben Stiller. Even better than that, this is me with a clean sweep of sexy awards:
Hilariously, none of them are mine. For some reason, a really hot chick kept coming over, saying "Well done" and patting me on the back before repeatedly handing me them. At one point, I had more awards than Amarillo Slim has playing cards. Of course, after I got back from the awards ceremony I did the only thing I could at this point:
....threw it all on EBay. If you bid higher than a lunar lander, blackjack and hookers you might be in with a chance. I'd like to thank my manager, my agent and the woman who thought I worked for six different companies for making this all possible.
After he published this, Boyd got up from his desk. "This is my Sistine Chapel, I have nothing left to say." He then left his house and walked into the sea.
No idea who Jillian is, but she sure can stuff a lot of security and PR people into one room then watch with glee as they spill out the door with pints of beer (and the occasional teriyaki chicken kebab) in hand. I did eat the odd kebab or three, but didn't touch the beer as six hours sleep in three days doesn't tend to mix well with alcohol.
The reason so many people were in this place was to attend the book launch / signing of Zero Day Threat, by USA Today reporters Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz.
I don't know whether it's just me or what, but I can't help notice that nobody ever seems to take pictures of things anymore. Well, whether standing around waiting to hijack the Teriyaki chicken platter or plummeting to my death, you can rely on me to snap away with lots of bad pictures so I hope that reassures you somewhat. Also, here's another random picture.
Go web go! The event didn't last too long, but considering I was dead on my feet that's probably a good thing. I think I have one of those comical situations where I'm booked into two events at once on Wednesday, which no doubt will involve lots of 1970 sitcom style japes as I slip from one room to another with ever so many delightful misunderstandings and tomfoolery.
Flight BA 287: I knew this was the wrong day to quit sniffing glue
I can't remember if it was the part where they announced there was a "problem with the hydraulics", or the bit where they said "and the navigation system is playing up too", or even if it was the moment of absurdity where the stewardess was running around saying "Don't panic" despite having covered herself in chicken sauce and shaking the service trays all over the place, but I think the real moment of "So, we're going to die" came along when they started jettisoning 10+ hours worth of fuel into the Ocean as we turned around to make an emergency landing in Ireland:
That's the fuel being splattered all over the sky, in an attempt to make the plane less explodey should it hit the ground.
Here come the fire engines, complete with little firemen guys running back and forth and looking worried:
Apparently the emergency services had been fully prepared for total carnage, so that's nice.
As you might have guessed, my flight to California did not run smoothly.
In fact, at every stage of the journey, something stupid happened. As soon as we hit Terminal 5 at Heathrow, everything went wrong. It looked like something out of 28 Days Later, with people randomly running around yelling and guys in yellow suits telling us all to remain calm.
I won't dwell on the utter lack of food to eat at T5 (unless you like really expensive sushi or Oysters), the waste bins with holes too small to put anything in them properly or the fact that nobody knew where any of the planes were landing. Instead, here's a photo of the departures / arrivals board (Click to enlarge if you can't read it):
.....yeah, says it all. The plane was delayed from taking off for two and a half hours because "We want to make sure your luggage is packed safely".
It wasn't.
We made the emergency landing in Ireland, didn't die horribly and (after sitting on the plane for another two hours or so on the runway) reached the carousel, only to find out that roughly half the 350 or so passengers (myself included) were missing their bags - despite being delayed from taking off for two hours in the first place, so they could "pack it all". Doh.
British Airways don't have any sort of official station at Shannon Airport, so there was nobody to talk to, no-one to ask for help and the airplane staff raced off for their hotel leaving us all to file onto random coaches they'd arranged for us. One cabin crew guy refused to let a rather distressed lady use his mobile to make a call because "It's my personal phone and I'm not letting people use it".
Gotta love that professionalism and care for the people they're entrusted with, right?
On the off-chance you DID get through to the BA Customer Service line, they would randomly hang up on people after listening to them for a few minutes. They kept telling one guy (whose skiing equipment for a family holiday had all gone AWOL) he could "change his dates", which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Change his DATES?? We're stranded in Ireland and making inquiries about missing luggage. What does "changing dates" have to do with anything?
Imagine our dismay when our coach broke down twice en-route to one of the hotels. It got worse when we discovered piles of people stranded outside overbooked hotels, who then started demanding to get on our coach too. The driver just wanted to dump us all in the street which was nice of him. Eventually we got to a hotel that had rooms available and ate dinner at, er, 11:30PM and were back at Shannon airport the next morning for 8AM or thereabouts. From there it just got worse, as we found out Shannon airport had no direct feed to the BA computer systems and so had to check us onto the plane manually or something (in other words, we had to stand round for a bunch more hours praying for death).
Oh, and if we wanted to try to get to California again, we had to get back on the plane that we thought was going to do a nosedive the day before (they don't have any spare jumbo jets at Shannon Airport, funnily enough). The look on this girls face pretty much summed up our reaction to this wonderful news:
Yeah, she ain't impressed (you can see some of the other passengers looking over at the plane sitting on the airstrip still being fiddled with. They probably weren't that impressed either).
We finally got on the plane, only to be told all the food had gone bad from the day before (not that we got to eat any of it), so they had to get some catering firm to come up with a ton of "pretend" airplane food and wait for them to deliver it.
Meanwhile, a plane came into land and its tire burst, causing a further delay as they scraped the junk off the runway. Oh, and people working at the terminal were claiming George Bush randomly decided to turn up in Airforce One, which seemingly led to more delays (whether he actually appeared or not, I have no clue).
Eventually we took off, which meant ten more hours of sitting round on the plane waiting for something else to go wrong, and sure enough, it did - though we didn't have anymore plane related scares, we arrived at the Homeland Security Desks only to be told that "our computer systems are malfunctioning". The whole time I have been traveling to America, I have NEVER seen the TSA systems acting up. I briefly considered just asking one of them to shoot me in the head at this point, or at least work me over a bit just to make me feel better. And we still had to stand around shouting at BA Employees afterwards, who were ever so generous in offering passengers with no bags up to $50 compensation.
So here I am, minus luggage and thoroughly sick of aeroplanes. I'm also faintly disturbed that the first reaction I had to what looked like impending doom was "Wow, this'll make a great blog and where's the camera" closely followed by "Crap, I'm missing an EBay auction I was watching".
Can't win em all. There was some coverage of the plane fiasco on Irish news and a few other stations, and it got a little bit of mileage - ahaha - here. The thing that caused all the problems was a computer card in charge of displaying fluid levels or something, though I doubt BA will ever actually reveal how close we came to a big ole heap of instant death. I did get to meet Rob Newby, which was good fun.
Pity about the rest of the trip so far though. On the bright side, I wasn't left standing here all night:
Be there, or be square. Or (to be more accurate) be there, or miss me wandering around like a confused idiot as Terminal 5 beats me down into the ground and dispenses poor service to my weary frame, Kung-Fu style. On the bright side, I'll probably have enough material to fill twenty blogs.
So there's that. And at least my underwear will go missing before Homeland Security start having a bring and buy sale in my suitcase, so everything is coming up roses.
"....the definitive counterbalance to the criminals he hunts: an unrelenting anti-crime boogeyman willing to employ any means necessary when taking down his prey. In a present day society where the victimization of innocent people has seemingly reached a point of saturation, there is something undeniably attractive and compelling about seeing bad people come to equally bad endings. He seems to understand this psychological component and taps this darker nature of the reader, drawing them into his world where the carnage and suffering of criminals becomes, for lack of a better term, entertaining."
I'm pretty sure I saw the above on an Amazon review somewhere and thought ooh, that's an awesome notable quotable. Save for future reference.
So I did.
And, as it turns out, it's a damn good description of the theme for my upcoming presentation at RSA 2008 with Robert Vamosi.
Tough on Crime; Tough on the Causes of Crime; Punching Crime in the Face with a Jackhammer.
As far as technical knowledge needed for the presentation goes - because people always get caught up in trying to make their presentation sound as technical as possible - I've gone for the opposite end of the spectrum this time round.
That's right kids, we're going for BERT AND ERNIE level. I hate talks where nobody understands what's actually going on, so if you can walk and chew gum at the same time, come on in and enjoy the show as we point and laugh at scumbags on the Internet. I'll also be showing you some tips, hints and tricks for taking down leet hax websites.
And if all else fails, there's always the sock puppets...
Check out a rundown of the events at the DC Conference here. There's pictures and everything, along with a link to audio files from the presentations. Feel free to comment here (well, actually you'll have to - the SPG comments thing is currently broken and in a state of mid-repair, apparently).
Something that did make me chuckle...previous ASC Conferences have used RealPlayer (argh) to record video of the events. Well, there's no video this time because that'd be vaguely weird, considering it just got classed as a piece of Badware.
Whoops. I just never understood why it was used in the first place. If they "fix" it, can you please just continue to not use the thing for video archiving? I'm sick of looking like a low-res version of Pac-Man (or, if you squint, Hitler in front of a map filled with targets).
I'm gonna' go dwell on the Hitler thing - I really should stop dressing all in black - and dream of conquering the Internets.
From marital aids to stun guns in one fell swoop. I think maybe the shopkeep has some "issues" to work out.
Anyway, click here for a big pile of photographs related to my recent trip out to the ASC Conference in DC (with a nifty stopover in New York). Huge thanks to Bill P for giving me a lift to the airport, and now I'm off for a lie down. Monday, Spywareguide, writeup, etc etc.
When I get back to England, I'll be posting about the conference on Spywareguide. For now, you can make do with the following slice of awesome pie.
See, turns out Lance plays a whole bunch of instruments, and after we finished our conference talk thing, we wandered to the piano stuck in the hallway.
Then the hands in the picture above ripped it up, yo. This was about the most awesome thing I have seen (well, heard) in ages.
I just went down to the lobby where everything is still getting set up, and someone hands me the booklet thing they always give out at these kind of events. I flip over to the Bio section for our panel, and...
....I can't believe I got away with that. I guess the ASC enjoys the odd slice of Goddamn Batman action too...
.....but this is not that day. It all started off well enough - catch the train from New York to DC...
....hurl the bags in the hotel then go out for a wander.
It was never going to be that easy, was it?
Within minutes of me leaving the hotel, some crazy fool decides to crash their car into someone else right outside the United States Capitol - seconds later, there's freaking cops running around waving guns, fire engines and a WHAAAAAMBULANCE for the chick who can't drive straight.
(Click to Enlarge)
Obviously, when terrorists decide to storm the Capital, their fiendish plan will involve two chicks fender bending each other while I stroll past looking confused.
Incidentally, last time I was in this same spot (or close enough) a bunch of guys in yellow boiler suits and masks holding hand-held scanners of some description went running past with a bunch of odd looking trucks.
Then I was violently ill for weeks. That ain't no kwinkydink!
....damn, I won't get tired of doing that anytime soon. To make up for it, here's two of the best things I saw today (and by "best", I mean "freaking nuts"):
....someone get me the number for Clown College right now.
There's something massively Freudian about this inflatable rat, but I can't quite work out what it is. On the bright side, he seems happy to see me.
I am indeed in New York for a few days before heading into DC for the ASC Conference - for some strange reason, Homeland Security didn't give me their usual YOU SUCK welcome and let me in with little to no fuss.
However, it all went nipples skyward when I found a scumbag sitting next to my bed. If my cool use of retro streetslang confuses and astounds you, click here and see if you can guess which definition I'm referring to.
I had a lot of plans for my first day in New York, but it's fair to say that phoning frontdesk to ask them to remove one LifeStyles Premium MEGA lubricated latex condom from behind the side unit wasn't one of them.
My room safe doesn't work either, so they probably just think I'm rock n' roll and breaking everything and having wild orgies and that. Speaking of which...
.....kinky bunch, these New Yorkers. "Shrimping"?
Dude, I don't even wanna come close to knowing what the Hell that is.
Wow, looks like it. Next week I'll be staggering around America, with a quick detour before I reach DC for the latest ASC Conference thingy.
Let's have a quick poll to see how the TSA are likely to meet and greet me this time:
Blogging frequency will veer between light and insane, depending on the amount of stupid things that take place. The last ASC Conference was good, but due to the location it meant that the majority of people there were involved in security anyway so you were kind of preaching to the converted.
Going back to the scene of their original (massive) conference seems to indicate a desire to make this a really big and involving event - I'd be surprised if the turnout was anything less than "a big pile of people doing stuff". Another plus point is that they no longer run simultaneous talks - so no missing things you really wanted to see, which is nice.
At any rate, it's a lot easier to find a great big hotel in the middle of DC than it is a medium sized room in some obscure part of Harvard University so the turnout should be booming, yo.
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