Positive Hack Days V forum: opening the door to singularity

The Fifth International Forum on Practical Safety Positive Hack Days will be held May 26 and 27, 2015 at the Moscow World Trade Center. The conference, organized by Positive Technologies, will bring together leading cyber defense experts and the hacker world elite, government officials and large business leaders, young scientists and journalists.

In 2014, the PHDays IV conference was attended by more than 2500 specialists from 18 countries. The PHDays formula remains unchanged: the excitement of the discoverers, the lack of dull advertising, unique equipment, a huge training ground for experiments, a substantive professional conversation, informal communication between hackers and security guards, real incidents at the heart of the competition plots.



As in previous years, the fifth PHDays conference will have its own surprises, united by the general theme of this year's forum.

The singularity is somewhere nearby

Many modern visionaries and futurologists are sure that civilization is on the verge of global change. The World Wide Web has accelerated the exchange of information, and the pace of scientific and technological progress resembles a soaring rocket. Neural networks and quantum computers, the “Internet of things” and artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and bioengineering ... What happens if all this starts working for the benefit of people at once? Perhaps this will be the most wonderful time in the history of mankind ...

Or vice versa - the most dangerous era for society, when a wave of chaos covers digital space and deforms unprepared reality. In this new world, your every word and action will be saved, indexed and used against you. The borders of this world for some people will be transparent, and for others they will become the walls of a new prison.

So, we are approaching the bifurcation point, and even a slight effect on a complex system can cause an avalanche-like rearrangement. What option awaits us? High-tech barbarism from the Gibson's “Bridge Trilogy” and the kingdom of Pelevin zuckerbrins - or the new “Noon, XXII Century”, where human civilization moves to the next level, defeating diseases and mastering other planets?

Every evening, closing our eyes, we risk waking up in another universe. A universe expanding into infinity at any moment can turn its run and rush to the starting point. Or finish. To the point of singularity. Can we make the right choice?

The fifth spring will be hot

For four years, in addition to victories in ratings and various awards, the forum has earned many good words from the professionals of the information security community.

A word to experts:

Bruce Schneier, cryptographer, head of information security at British Telecom:

We have been holding security conferences for more than a decade. These are mostly boring corporate events. But this conference is something completely different. She is inspirational, she is practical and very countercultural.

Mark Hoyse (van Hauser):

I expected a lot of things when I was going to Moscow. I thought there were severe Russian hackers, all with such long beards, dressed in black, sitting hunched over their small laptops. In fact, it turned out that everyone was very friendly and open ... At the conference, it was easy to meet business people in formal suits and students in T-shirts - an excellent cocktail!

Nick Galbreth:

Defcon has a competitor. And this is good.

Sergey Khodakov, head of the IB department of the Skolkovo Foundation:

PHDays provides an incentive for talented teams to think about developing innovative products to find themselves in entrepreneurship, in the "white" IB community.

William Hagestad, American expert on military cyber technology:

PHDays is a unique event that provides an opportunity to see how security is created and who is who in this area. The forum stands out against the background thanks to realistic competitions such as CTF, the Critical Infrastructure Attack contest for hacking SCADA systems and overcoming the obstacle course in the "smart home".

Geohot:

It was amazing and very intense.

Marc Furre, President of the Swiss company ComCom:

Great experience. PHDays is an exceptionally creative event. Amazing atmosphere.

Yuri Grin, Deputy Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau:

Events like PHDays provide a better understanding of the multifaceted nature of information security issues and the complexity of the challenges faced by professionals from various industries in the course of protecting their ICT infrastructure.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky:

We must work together to find ways to ensure that young people do not become criminals. We need to work on the positive!

Preparations for PHDays V are already in full swing: experts from among the organizers draw dozens of drawings, conduct nightly tests behind closed doors, and purchase unusual equipment.

Watch cuts from past PHDays, records of the best reports of the fourth forum and prepare your research for Call for Papers - soon the first stage of applying for the speech will begin. Everyone has a chance!



See you at the Positive Hack Days V!