Tonight I was invited out to Ignite Seattle! I expected a bunch of anti-social geeks with nothing too interesting. However, what I got to was an awesome event! Most of the presentations were indeed interesting. The fast paced slides (15 seconds per slide, max 5 minutes) kept things moving and everyone awake. In between presentations, I got to do some great networking! I met some amazing people, someone from Google, someone from Amazon, someone from Make Magazine and even someone from O’Reilly! There were other people from other well known companies, but I only got to talk to a few of the people at the event. After talking to all these people, it has really inspired me to maybe start doing my own presentations. I have a lot of things to talk about, but a chunk of my ideas I have normally kept to myself. I am not just talking computing, but even generic electronic hacks! I already have an idea of what my first presentation should be about: Firewalls and NAT protection. Inspired by a great guy named Dan Kaminsky and his really well done presentation (and papers) on DNS rebinding attacks, I know exactly how I will focus my presentation. It is a mix of how people trust their firewalls too much to over compensate for bad software and how people hide behind NAT routers thinking they are completely safe. After some discussion, I’ve decided to name my presentation “Pulling out a Rabbit from behind a NAT”. Effectively, the “coup de grâce” of my presentation will be ways of poking at people behind the NAT without solicitation.
