Also, shoutout to the peeps hacking away on the #thotcon badge. Let me know if you'd like to take a look at the firmware.

Came out for #thotcon but stayed for funtime unicorns

I’ve haven’t had a requirement to touch a mainframe in 11 years now but still nostalgic for them. I wouldn’t be in #infosec without them. #thotcon

Information Society is still alive. And I feel incredibly old. #thotcon

#InformationSociety is playing at #thotcon

Cheers from #THOTCON!

Just got to Chicago for my first #Thotcon and really excited about it! Schedule looks fantastic.

If you're attending #thotcon this year, chase me down for stickers.

@thotcon i thought this was a convention where hoes stood randomly and people pointed them out.#thotcon

Congratulations to our THOTCON 0xC Keynotes, Speakers and Workshops!

See you in May!

https://www.thotcon.org/speakers.html

#thotcon #chicago #hacking #security #infosec #cfp

I've stuck around the Midwest mostly for cons like @CircleCityCon #Thotcon #GrrCon and Bsides mostly. I've spoken at #shmoocon and been to #defcon. But this week I went to #cactuscon and it was awesome!

Can ya recommend other cons to go to? I want to get out of my comfort zone, but I'd like to know where people are going. Bonus points if their CFP is still open ;)

2 weeks left to submit to the @thotcon 0xC Call For Papers (CFP): https://www.thotcon.org/cfp.html #infosec #event #thotcon

@ChristinaLekati I'm attending #thotcon in #Chicago. Think it's in May?
https://www.thotcon.org/

Have an #introduction !

Established career in #socialwork , currently studying #infosec / #cybersecurity

Outside of classes and my day job, I'm:
-building a #homelab so I can tinker and fail as often as I want
-exploring #hackthebox and #tryhackme
-planning to attend #cyphercon #thotcon and MAYBE #defcon in 2023

Also an #aviation nerd, so it's cool to see the #HackerFlightSchool here 🛩️

Other interests:
#ttrpgs e.g. #dnd5e or #bladesinthedark
#libraries and #books
#geocaching
#hockey
#opera and #theatre
#metalhead find me in the pit

#IveGottaStoryToTell This is a story about a #TraumaticBrainInjury and how I worked to recover from it.

New platform, new friends. And I hope to meet a bunch of you at #THOTCON next year. I'm going to share a story about an injury I had and the things I did to overcome it. The profile pic is of me a few years after the incident.

Okay.

So 7 years ago I was found in a pool of my own blood. I could barely speak and I was fading in and out of consciousness. I was fortunate enough to be found by people that know me and called 911. It's estimated that I was laying there for about three hours.

It was winter. I had fallen in such a way that I subdural hematoma. The ice's cooling effect was probably the first miracle along the way.
There were no ICU beds open so they circled me around the city until one opened up.

One of my brief memories was vomiting up so much black blood. It was into a bucket. Or a waste bin. It's like a snapshot. But hazy. I only have about seven of them from the whole experience.

I was in and out of consciousness for about a week. I remember at one point seeing my brother in law reading next a red light. I said, "What the fuck are you doing in my bed room?"

"Making sure you don't die, asshole."

"Okay."

Darkness.

I was released a week later. I remember get wheeled out of the hospital in a daze. My entire life had changed. I had changed and I had zero idea really.

There's a lot of detail I'm going to leave out. Keeping my business afloat, for example. Or my loss of smell.

The biggest issue that I had was that I was dumber than a bag of hammers. I couldn't read. I mean, I could still understand most words. But they would come at me all at once. I would get so mad at my wife because she would ask me to read to the kids and I couldn't. I was make sentences up out of words on both pages. Then I would have to stop and slowly reconstruct the sentence bit by bit.

My ability to focus was lost too. I couldn't carry on conversations for more than, at the start of it, 30 seconds or so without getting distracted.

About six months into this, I resolved that I would have to take rebuilding my brain into my own hands. So I started a program. Every day, I would read a book. Any book. And I would try to meditate. And! I would learn and study French. Only if it meant 20 minutes a day per each task.

For one year I did this. Any book. Math books, young adult, literature, philosophy. It didn't matter. At the end of the journey, I had averaged 1 book a week. 52 books.

For the French, I started out with Duolingo, worked up to Pimsleur CDs, and then eventually shows like Extra.

After about a year of this, I started to get back to a place where I could feel I close to normal again. It took another 3-4 years to get back to that feeling in general. My executive function is pretty close to being normal again.

Near death experiences have a way of clarifying what you want out of life. It led me to reevaluate my choices. Some things were easy. I still loved my wife and kids. Other things were hard. I wanted to switch to #infosec and I wanted to learn #French. So I did what any reasonable person would do. I worked at it a little bit every single day.

So if you find yourself in such a situation - and I hope you don't. But if you do, just do a little bit every day. Some days will be harder than others. But it's okay. Just keep going.

I've used up a lot of words. And there's a lot more about this journey I want to share. Perhaps I'll blog about it one day. But for now - this will do. I hope you found the story interesting.

Anyone from the Chicago hacker scene on here? #security #thotcon

Apparently #thotcon is not what you'd think it is…

The code is now live.

#FreeBSD #infosec #thotcon

Created the GitHub repos for my "Writing #FreeBSD #Malware" presentation at #Thotcon. The code will land after my presentation.

Pay attention to these repos:

https://github.com/SoldierX/evilhijack
https://github.com/SoldierX/evilso
https://github.com/SoldierX/libinfect
https://github.com/SoldierX/libmicroevil

#infosec

I guess #CarolinaCon recorded my "Writing #FreeBSD #Malware" presentation.

With this presentation being just shy of an hour, this is only a preview of the #Thotcon version, which will be around 2.5 hours long.

The demo code will be released after my Thotcon presentation.

#infosec

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT_k06Xg-BE