This year was my first time at the balccon conference. This infosec event takes place in Serbia and is a community oriented congress very similar to the CCC Congress in Germany. I felt very comfortable there right from the start. There were incredibly good talks and fantastic installations built by the community.
Art and Blinky
One of my favourite installations at the CCC is the ‘mate-wall’. This consists of Club Mate boxes filled with bottles containing LEDs. This wall is thus a giant screen. As it is quite difficult to get hold of Club Mate crates in Serbia, there is the ‘Pivowall’ at the BalCCon:
CTF
Of course there was a Capture The Flag event too. And this CTF was a Smart-Home-CTF in form of a doll’s house. Unfortunately a friend and I only managed 2 challenges, but it was a lot of fun to try.
People
I met wonderful people there with brilliant minds and I had so much fun. I watched the people picking locks at the LockPicking Competition, learned stuff about OT-security, one guy explained how he hacked Govee devices and I enjoyed so many talks about other topics such as “exploring malicious Windows drivers”. I puzzled along with the participants of the Hacker Jeopardy and watched more or less skilled people singing at the Karaoke. And there was “Rakija Leaks”. Because Rakija connects people…
See you next Time
BalCCon2k24 was mindblowing. And I want to see all of you next time at this fantastic event.
