Dr. Gary at DEFCON 31.
Dr. "Scuba" Steve Gary attended 31, the world's largest hacker conference. He attends every year to keep abreast of the latest innovations in the hacker community. "The more we know about the threats and vulnerabilities in cyberspace, the more we know how to reduce the threats, and prevent or mitigate exploitation (hacking) of those vulnerabilities."
Dr. Gary particularly likes the villages, areas with hands-on activities. There were over 30 villages again this year. One of the new villages this year, Quantum Village, was focused on the current progress on quantum technology and what the future may hold. The synopsis is, quantum is slow and expensive today, but if a major breakthrough happens, who knows what quantum will look like in the future. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) village was popular this year, for obvious reasons, like the fact that ChatGPT and many other generative AI technologies are making headway in AI. As always, there was a Red Team Village, focused on offensive security, also known as pen testing (this is what most people know as hacking). There were Adversary, Blue Team, Car Hacking, Social Engineering Community, Internet of Things (IoT), and Voting Machine Hacking (although popular this year, this one will be very popular next year) villages, to name a few. The presentations are always good too, but there are too many to list here. Military Cyber Professionals Association (MCPA), of which he is Tampa Chapter President, hosted the Arcade Party, a DEFCON favorite, again this year.