October 4, 2025
Speakers and timing subject to change
| Time | Activity | Speaker |
| 0830 – 0845 | doors open! | – |
| 0845 – 0900 | Opening Ceremonies | Serious_Business |
| 0900 – 0950 | Take back our data! Giving users the privacy they deserve with Veilid | DilDog && Medus4 |
| 0950 – 1000 | short break! | |
| 1000 – 1030 | Browsing RadioReference Is OSINT Right? What You Need To Know Before Buying An SDR | Ethan Hansen |
| 1030 – 1100 | Resilient Off-Grid Communications to Combat Fascism | Eris |
| 1100 – 1115 | short break! | – |
| 1115 – 1145 | Agents of Chaos: How AI and Digital Agents Are Used for Crime | Zara Perumal |
| 1145 – 1215 | Versus Killnet | Alex Holden |
| 1215 – 1335 | community social time! | – |
| 1335 – 1345 | Closing Ceremonies | Serious_Business |
Doors Open
Grab a name tag and chat with community members!
Opening Ceremonies
We’ll take a brief moment to welcome everyone, go over any last-minute business, and then get started with the conference!
Take back our data! Giving users the privacy they deserve with Veilid
DilDog (he/him), Medus4 (she/her)
In this talk, we will be going over how the Veilid network works- the private/public routing, the encryption involved, and the various methods we use to allow developers to build private apps with no overhead. We will be delving into the ideals of the project, the current state of privacy, and some of the challenges we have encountered when building such a complex network. We want to discuss the importance of diverse community building when creating open source projects of this scale, and how that helps with adoption as well as avoiding foreseeable issues. Then, we will introduce VeilidChat, show how it works, and explain some of the design and usability choices that went into the app. Finally, I’ll invite everyone to join the project or download the beta, because TOGETHER we can build a better way to communicate!
Browsing RadioReference Is OSINT Right? What You Need To Know Before Buying An SDR
Ethan Hansen (he/him)
Software Defined Radio (SDR) is amazing tool in your toolbox. As we learned last year from Dr. Esquire’s talk there are a lot of military and government signals out there that anybody can listen to without spending a ton of money. But what if you wanted to tighten the scope from (very cool) military satellite communications to your own backyard and keep an ear on local public safety? This talk aims to give a crash course on using public information to figure out what radio systems and technology your local/County/State/Federal agencies use and how it can help guide your SDR setup so that you can stay informed (and inform others) about what is going on around you. The presentation will also touch on various terminology and technical concepts related to radio systems, some potentially helpful software, some potential antenna options and the pros/cons of going beyond SDRs into radio and scanner hardware. Also, much like Dr. Esquire before me, I am not going to talk about decryption. If you are not an authorized user of an encrypted system you won’t be listening to it.
Resilient Off-Grid Communications to Combat Fascism
Eris (she/they)
This presentation aims to discuss how off-grid mesh networks, such as Meshtastic, can be used to communicate effectively and securely without relying on infrastructure controlled by governments and corporations. In fascist societies and times of civil unrest, reliability of existing communication networks becomes increasingly uncertain as authoritarian leaders attempt to exert control over targeted communities. This will include use cases, an overview of mesh networks and Meshtastic, why these networks are effective, and how to get started. This presentation discusses peer-to-peer mesh networks, cryptography, and countersurveillance for security and privacy.
Agents of Chaos: How AI and Digital Agents Are Used for Crime
Zara Perumal (she/her)
In this talk, we will start by summarizing and showing how AI is currently being used for crime. We will present examples from dark web chatter, criminal tool discussions, and recent security research to illustrate how threat actors are adopting generative AI to automate and scale fraud, deception, and system abuse.
Next, we will analyze what this means for the threat landscape. We will look at how these tools are reshaping access to cybercrime, lowering barriers to entry, and increasing operational speed and scale for social engineering at an extremely personal level.
We will examine the following categories of AI use for crime from
- Learning to Commit Crime: LLMs used to explain phishing, fraud, laundering, and other illicit workflows
- Synthetic Profile Generation: Automation of fake identities with supporting metadata and documents
- Spam and Scam Messaging: Mass generation of phishing messages and impersonation content
- Deepfake Images and Video: Used to push scam sales, in romance scams, phishing, transfer scams, and sextortion
- Code Generation: Used to improve malware development processes, improve vulnerability scanning, or make scam pages
We will then move into how these systems are built to. We will show examples of how “evil GPTs” and automated agents can be made, from fine-tuning open-source models to answer questions about crime to building agents that carry out phishing workflows or send scam SMS messages. This section will include a walkthrough of creating a simple agent using freely available tools, with explanations of prompt design, testing, and deployment.
Versus Killnet
Alex Holden (-)
The infamous Russian hacktivist group, Killnet, operated as a clandestine cyber army, orchestrated by a select few to create chaos and inflict harm. Despite its notoriety, investigating the true operators behind Killnet proved to be a significant challenge, given its checkered history and inconsistent behavior. However, through an in-depth investigation and direct confrontation with the gang, we shed the veil of secrecy shrouding the group and will share a compelling personal account detailing how we disrupted Killnet, plunging it into a death spiral. Our strategy to dismantle this cyber army hinged on identifying a critical vulnerability – its connection to the Russian illegal drug marketplace – Solaris. By exposing this nefarious link and diverting proceeds from the Russian drug operation to support a Ukrainian charity, we triggered widespread questioning of Killnet’s leadership and actions. This created an instability and within the group and beyond, ultimately leading to loss of support of the Russian government and breaking of financial ties. Delving deeper, we will explore the true identity of Killnet’s leader, KillMilk, and explore his dark and criminal past. This will allow you to see some of the Killnet’s actions in a different light and interpret the public events and actions associated with Killnet. Our successful efforts to undermine Killnet’s leadership have led to a spectacular downfall and disintegration of the entire collective. As of the beginning of this year, Killnet changed drastically, leaving behind remnants of a group once synonymous with disruptive hacktivism. Our small push against Killnet set forth a chain of events changing the trajectory of the group and leaving it far removed from its former destructive pursuits. Join me as I unravel the complex narrative of Killnet, offering insights into the evolution of cyber warfare and the enduring struggle to combat malicious actors in the world of cyber warfare and disruptive hacktivism.
Community Social Time
Hang out, chat, get to know your local hacker community. There may even be free pizza…?
Closing Ceremonies
Wrap things up for the day!