Datadog guide to Hacker Summer Camp 2024

It’s that time of the year again when many security professionals begin their pilgrimage to balmy Las Vegas, Nevada, to attend one or more of the conferences colloquially known as Hacker Summer Camp. Each year, Hacker Summer Camp attracts tens of thousands of professionals and cyber enthusiasts. Whether you’re looking to break into the field or are an elite hacker, one of these events is bound to be full of relevant content for you. In this article, we’ll break down the conferences and how they are different, preview a few talks we’re excited about, and give you some advice from long-time attendees on how to maximize your experience

The Schedule

This year is a little different with the week kicking off with Diana Initiative and ending with DEFCON. The Diana Initiative is a conference whose mandate is to empower underrepresented groups in tech to grow their cyber skills and network. Through the week the intent shifts toward keynotes, innovative research, and the infamous BlackHat arsenal. DEFCON wraps the week with its usual “anything goes” style conference where you might see everything from hacking satellites to exploits for IoT enabled kitchen appliances.

Diana Initiative: August 5
The Diana Initiative is a conference whose purpose is helping people from underrepresented groups achieve success in information security.

BSides Las Vegas: August 6–7
BSidesLV is a two-day information security conference that is volunteer organized, community driven, and community and corporate sponsored.

BlackHat USA: August 7–8
The two-day BlackHat USA conference includes a range of events, including BlackHat Briefings, a computer security conference that provides security consulting, training, and briefings to hackers, corporations, and government agencies around the world. BlackHat Arsenal is a showfloor where open source maintainers get to present and demonstrate their open source projects related to security.

DEF CON: August 8–11
DEF CON is a hacker convention that takes place immediately following BlackHat in Las Vegas every year. It has both a main stage and numerous sub-conferences, called "villages," that are based around diverse topics ranging from cloud security to car hacking and adversary emulation.

This year’s Summer Camp Conferences are spaced out in such a way that it’s actually possible to see a little bit of everything, but we’d encourage you to get up close and personal with just one or two of the conferences.

Talks we can’t wait to see

At Datadog, observability and security are two things that are in our DNA. This year’s talk schedule across all four conferences shows us that the industry agrees that these two topics are of utmost importance. Here are just a few examples of how observability is driving the cyber security industry:

(in chronological order)

> This will be updated as villages and conferences publish their schedules

These talks either have observability baked into the research they are presenting, or demonstrate the need to observe all the things in order to secure them. Systems that were once rare, like CI/CD pipelines, are now commonplace. The old adage that hackers exploit new frontiers holds true which illustrates the need for observability at every layer of the stack including pre-production.

Advisories

Las Vegas is going to be hotter than a data center with a failed air conditioner. The weather forecast is predicting temperatures in excess of 100–106°F, or 37–41°C. That’s hot enough to bake bread inside your car while attending the conference. Remember to stay hydrated, bring a water bottle, and keep to the cool spaces whenever possible, especially during the day.

This year's DEF CON has seen a change in venue, from its spot in the middle of the strip down to the Las Vegas convention center. The convention center is accessible from many hotels using the Monorail system, which will get you there faster and cheaper than a rideshare.

Stay cool, and hack smart!