Guess What? Most Conferences Leak High Value Information
September 24, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I read the Wired “real news” article titled “Did a Chinese University Hacking Competition Target a Real Victim?” The main idea of the article is that a conference attracted security professionals. To spice up the person talking approach to conferences, “games” were organized. The article makes clear that the conference and the activities could have and maybe were a way for some people involved with and at the conference to obtain high-value information.
News flash! A typical conference setting. Everyone is listening for hot info. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
I have a “real news” flash for the folks at Wired. Any conference — including those with restricted attendance or special security checks — can be vectors for exfiltration of high-value information. After one lecture I delivered at a flashy public conference, a person who identified himself as a business professional wanted to invite me to give lectures in a country not in the EU. I listened. I asked questions. I received only fuzzy wuzzy answers. I did hear all expenses paid and an honorarium. I explained that I was a dinobaby. I wanted more details before I could say yes or no. I told the gentleman I had a meeting and had to get to that commitment. How often has that happened to me? At one conference I attended for six or seven years, a similar conversation took place with me and a business professional every time I gave a lecture.
Within the last 12 months, one of my talks was converted into an email from someone in the audience and a “real” journalist. Some of my team’s findings appeared without attribution in one of few remaining big name online publications. Based on my experience alone, I think attending conferences related to any “hot” technical subject is going to be like a freshly grilled Trader Joe’s veggie burger to a young-at-heart member of the Diptera clan (that’s a house fly, but you probably know that).
Let me offer several observations which may be use to people speaking at public, semi-public, or restricted events:
- Make darned sure you are not providing high-value actionable information. If one is not self aware, speakers get excited and do a core dump. The people seeking information for a purpose the speaker has not intended just writes it down and snaps mobile phone pix of the visuals. If a speakers says something of utility, that information is gone and can make its way into the hands of competitors, bad actors, or enemies of one nation state or another. The burden is on the attendee. Period.
- If handouts are provided, make certain these do not contain the complete information payload. If I prepare what I call a feuilles détachées, these are sanitized by omitting specific details. The general idea is expressed, but the good stuff is omitted. In short, neuter what is publicly available.
- Research the conference. Know before you go. If the conference is “secure,” you will have to chase down one of the disorganized and harried organizers and ask them to read you the names of the companies or agencies which sent representatives.
- Find out who the exhibitors are. Often some names appear on the conference Web site, but others — often some interesting outfits — don’t want any publicity. The conference is a way to learn what competitors are doing, identify prospects, pick up high value information, and recruit people to do work that can get them in some interesting conversations. Who knows? Maybe that consulting job dangled in front of a clueless attendee is a way to penetrate an organization?
- Leveraging conferences for intelligence is standard operating procedure.
Net net: Answer the question, “What’s the difference between high-value information and marketing baloney?” Here’s my response: “A failure to know or anticipate what the other person knows and needs. This is not news. It is common sense.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2024
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