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THREADS is an annual conference that focuses on pragmatic security research and new discoveries in network attack and defense. Held each year during NYU-Poly’s Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) in Brooklyn, NY, THREADS is organized by NYU-Poly Hackers in Residence Dan Guido, Dino Dai Zovi and Julian Cohen with the help of cyber security students at the university.

THREADS aims to present and discuss cutting edge, peer reviewed, industrial and academic research in computer and network security. THREADS focuses on developments and advances in attack techniques and attacker methodologies. We want to discuss what vulnerabilities exist and how attackers of today and tomorrow exploit those vulnerabilities. Register for THREADS as an attendee.

In 2011, DARPA launched Cyber Fast Track and led a revolution in government-funded cybersecurity research. For the first time, individual hackers could pitch their own great ideas and, if selected, receive government funding for their projects immediately. For 18 months, DARPA came to agreements with over 100 commercial firms to fund cutting-edge advancements in information security that have now made their way into open-source and commercial products. This year’s THREADS conference highlights some of the best tools, products and research to come out of the Cyber Fast Track program and gives you the opportunity to hear from the researchers themselves.

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Thursday, November 14 • 4:30pm - 6:30pm
PANEL: Are Reversing and Exploitation an Art or a Science?

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Traditionally, identification and exploitation of software security flaws has been a tedious and manual process. In the last decade, both academic and industry researchers have turned to applying automation and mechanical reasoning to both processes. Initial results have been promising, however, there has been a spirited debate both among industry researchers and academic researchers about how much progress can be made to fully automate a hacker's job.

We will host a panel discussion on the topic of automated reverse engineering and exploit development. This panel will feature current professionals and researchers with strong opinions in either direction, with a neutral moderator. Together, the panel will explore the benefits and challenges of automated reverse engineering, mechanical reasoning, automated vulnerability identification and exploit creation.

Position for: The work of a hacker, in identifying vulnerabilities and creating exploits, can be reduced to a simple set of axioms that current mechanical problem solving strategies can, or soon will, reason about. Machines are "close" to replacing hackers.

Position against: Identifying vulnerabilities and creating exploits is more art than science. We don't fully understand how we find new bugs and bug classes today, so how can something short of general Artificial Intelligence solve these problems?

Hackers
  • Chris Rohlf
  • Brandon Edwards
  • Dionysus Blazakis
  • Pete Markowsky

Hackademics
  • Sergey Bratus
  • Dan Caselden
  • Meredith Patterson

Moderator: Julien Vanegue
Moderators
JV

Julien Vanegue

Security Architect, Bloomberg L.P.
Julien Vanegue is a security architect in the CTO office at Bloomberg L.P. where he focuses on software security initiatives for the Bloomberg terminal and services. Julien graduated from EPITA (Paris, France) with a Master degree in computer engineering, specializing in low level... Read More →

Speakers
SB

Sergey Bratus

Research Assistant Professor, Dartmouth College
Sergey Bratus is a Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Dartmouth College. He believes that exploitation has developed into a distinct engineering discipline, which is key to understanding overlooked computational properties of actual computing systems and poses significant... Read More →
DC

Dan Caselden

Sr. Vulnerability Researcher, FireEye
As a Vulnerability Researcher with FireEye, Dan Caselden monitors samples for 0day exploits and prototypes malware analysis techniques. Prior to FireEye, he started the two-man consulting company Trapbit, researched binary analysis techniques on the BitBlaze team at UC Berkeley, and... Read More →
BE

Brandon Edwards

Co-Founder & VP of Intelligence, Exodus Intelligence
Brandon Edwards is a co-founder and VP of Intelligence at Exodus Intelligence. His experience includes architecture security assessment, source-code analysis, network penetration testing, reverse engineering, vulnerability research, and exploit development. Prior to Exodus, Brandon... Read More →
PM

Pete Markowsky

Sr. Security Researcher, Ocean's Edge Inc.
Pete Markowsky's been working in information security since 2003. He has worked in numerous capacities across the industry such as developer, operations, as a reverse engineer, as pentester and code auditor. He has worked at places such as Northeastern University, Cisco, Google... Read More →
CR

Chris Rohlf

Founder, Leaf Security Research
Chris is the founder of Leaf Security Research. Prior to founding Leaf SR, Chris was a principal security consultant at Matasano Security in NYC. He has spent the last 10 years as a security researcher, consultant, developer and engineer for organizations including the US Department... Read More →

Thursday November 14, 2013 4:30pm - 6:30pm EST
Pfizer Auditorium 5 Metrotech Center
  Panel

Attendees (0)