---
date: '2020-03-09'
subtitle: 'An opinion-filled review of Nullcon Goa, 2020'
title: Nullcon 2020
url: 'nullcon-2020'
---

**Disclaimer**: Political.

This year's conference was at the Taj Hotel and Convention center, Dona
Paula, and its associated party at Cidade de Goa, also by Taj. Great
choice of venue, perhaps even better than last time. The food was fine,
the views were better.

With *those* things out of the way---let's talk talks. I think I
preferred the panels to the talks---I enjoy a good, stimulating
discussion as opposed to only half-understanding a deeply technical
talk---but that's just me. But there was this one talk that I really
enjoyed, perhaps due to its unintended comedic value; I'll get into that
later.

The list of panels/talks I attended in order:

**Day 1**

-   Keynote: The Metadata Trap by Micah Lee (Talk)
-   Securing the Human Factor (Panel)
-   Predicting Danger: Building the Ideal Threat Intelligence Model
    (Panel)
-   Lessons from the Cyber Trenches (Panel)
-   Mlw 41\#: a new sophisticated loader by APT group TA505 by Alexey
    Vishnyakov (Talk)
-   Taking the guess out of Glitching by Adam Laurie (Talk)
-   Keynote: Cybersecurity in India -- Information Assymetry, Cross
    Border Threats and National Sovereignty by Saumil Shah (Talk)

**Day 2**

-   Keynote: Crouching hacker, killer robot? Removing fear from
    cyber-physical security by Stefano Zanero (Talk)
-   Supply Chain Security in Critical Infrastructure Systems (Panel)
-   Putting it all together: building an iOS jailbreak from scratch by
    Umang Raghuvanshi (Talk)
-   Hack the Law: Protection for Ethical Cyber Security Research in
    India (Panel)

Re: Closing keynote
-------------------

I wish I could link the talk, but it hasn't been uploaded just yet. I'll
do it once it has. So, I've a few comments I'd like to make on some of
Saumil's statements.

He proposed that the security industry trust the user more, and let them
make the decisions pertaining to personal security / privacy.
Except...that's just not going to happen. If all users were capable of
making good, security-first choices---we as an industry don't need to
exist. But that is unfortunately not the case. Users are dumb. They
value convenience and immediacy over security. That's the sad truth of
the modern age.

Another thing he proposed was that the Indian Government build our own
"Military Grade" and "Consumer Grade" encryption.

*...what?*

A "security professional" suggesting that we roll our own crypto? What
even. Oh and, to top it off---when
[Raman](https://twitter.com/tame_wildcard), very rightly countered
saying that the biggest opponent to encryption *is* the Government, and
trusting them to build safe cryptosystems is probably not wise, he
responded by saying something to the effect of "Eh, who cares? If they
want to backdoor it, let them."

Bruh moment.

He also had some interesting things to say about countering
disinformation. He said, and I quote "Join the STFU University".

¿wat? Is that your best solution?

Judging by his profile, and certain other things he said in the talk, it
is safe to conclude that his ideals are fairly...nationalistic. I'm not
one to police political opinions, I couldn't care less which way you
lean, but the statements made in the talk were straight up incorrect.

Closing thoughts
----------------

This came out more rant-like than I'd intended. It is also the first
blog post where I dip my toes into politics. I've some thoughts on more
controversial topics for my next entry. That'll be fun, especially when
my follower count starts dropping. LULW.

Saumil, if you ever end up reading this, note that this is not a
personal attack. I think you're a cool guy.

Note to the Nullcon organizers: you guys did a fantastic job running the
conference despite Corona-chan's best efforts. I'd like to suggest one
little thing though---please VET YOUR SPEAKERS more!

![group pic](/static/img/nullcon_beach.jpg)