Building the Hacker Tracker

Presented at DEF CON 26 (2018), Aug. 9, 2018, 3 p.m. (20 minutes).

In 2012, back when DEF CON still fit in the Riviera (RIP), I recognized a gap to fill. I wanted to create a mobile version of the paper DEF CON booklet that everyone could use at the con.

I was unable to attend the conference that year. I was 8 months pregnant with my first child, and because I couldn't be there in person, I spent a lot of time wishing I was.

So I built it. I spent countless hours pouring my heart into what became the Hacker Tracker, shiny graphics and all, and was committing code up until the minute I went into labor.

Fast forward a few years: Seth was frustrated with the lack of a mobile app for iOS while attending DEF CON. Subsequently, he found the Android version of Hacker Tracker and reached out to me about creating an iOS version. I was thrilled that someone wanted to join me and help grow the project. Not long after that, I recruited Chris to work on the app as well.

Now, 6 years since its inception, a small team supports the app development across iOS and Android and the apps are being used by half a dozen different conferences, representing several thousand users.

From nothing to something, we've experienced quite a bit in 6 years. Join us as we share our moments of joy, fear, and panic,"things not to do", and more.

Presenters:

• Whitney Champion - Senior Systems Engineer
  Whitney is a systems architect in South Carolina. She has held several roles throughout her career- security engineer, systems engineer, mobile developer, cloud architect, consulting architect, to name a few. In the last 15 years, she has worked on operations teams, support teams, development teams, and consulting teams, in both the private and public sector, supporting anywhere from a handful of users to hundreds of thousands. No matter the role, security has always been an area of passion and focus. @shortxstack
• Seth Law - Application Security Consultant, Redpoint Security
  Seth is an independent security consultant with Redpoint Security in Salt Lake City, where he performs security research and consulting for a various clients. He spends the majority of his time thinking up ways to exploit and secure applications, but has been known to pull out an IDE as the need arises. Over the course of his career, Seth has honed application security skills using offensive and defensive techniques, including tool development and research. He has an (un)healthy obsession with all things security related and regularly heads down the rabbit hole to research the latest vulnerability or possible exposures. Seth can regularly be found at developer meetups and security get-togethers, whether speaking or learning. @sethlaw

Links:

• https://defcon.org/html/defcon-26/dc-26-speakers.html#Champion
• https://infocon.org/cons/DEF CON/DEF CON 26/DEF CON 26 video and slides/DEF CON 26 - Champion and Law - Building the Hacker Tracker.mp4
• https://infocon.org/cons/DEF CON/DEF CON 26/DEF CON 26 video and slides/DEF CON 26 - Champion and Law - Building the Hacker Tracker.srt (subtitles)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcPMwCUA5dY

Similar Presentations:

• DEF CON 23 (2015) / DEF CON 101: The Panel
• DEF CON 30 (2022) / Panel - "So It's your first DEF CON" - How to get the most out of DEF CON, What NOT to do.
• DEF CON 31 (2023) / DEF CON 101 - Welcome to DEF CON Panel