Deadwood 2023 Conference Agenda: Everything!

Here is the complete list of scheduled events scheduled for Wild West Hackin’ Fest.

* Times and locations of talks are subject to change.

Dinner for All Training Attendees

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Training attendees are invited to join WWHF Staff, speakers, and sponsors for dinner in the main hall!

WWHF Pre-Conference Training

Multi-location Deadwood

One of the very cool things about Wild West Hackin’ Fest is that we bring the very best in infosec training, workshops, and presentations. Here are the training classes we have scheduled.

Wild West Hackin’ Fest

Deadwood Mountain Grand (DMG) 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Wild West Hackin’ Fest is the most happenin infosec conference on any side of the Mississippi!

Register Now!

Event Series Conference Registation

Conference Registration

Deadwood Mountain Grand (DMG) 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

The Registration Desk is the place to be! If you need to check in, get your swag bag, or find out where you need to go, come find us!

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Open Mic Night at the Elks Club

Elks Lodge 696 (1/2) Main, Deadwood, South Dakota, United States

Join BHIS staff members for WWHF Open Mic night! You can choose to be entertained by the music and grab a drink or play along with the other musicians. We will have rock band set up with drums, guitars, basses, and keyboards available, or if you want to bring that special instrument or guitar pedal that makes that super sweet tone you can’t live without… that works too!

Event Series Conference Registation

Conference Registration

Deadwood Mountain Grand (DMG) 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

The Registration Desk is your one-stop for checking in for the conference, getting your swag bag, finding out where things are happening, and so much more!

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Keynote: We’re All Scared, Too: 10 Years of Lessons from Cybersecurity Mentorship – Lesley Carhart

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Helping people choose career trajectories and overcome hurdles in employment has been a fascinating window into the fears, insecurities, concerns, problems, and victories of a wide range of people who work (or want to work) in cybersecurity. Many of their challenges are more universal than people are brave enough to admit, and everyone can learn from them to have a happier career.

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Empowering the Cybersecurity Workforce: A Practical Guide to Effective Networking and Mentorship – Gerald Auger and James McQuiggan

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

The ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats demands a constant flow of new ideas, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Professionals should consider the pivotal role that networking communities and mentorship play in fostering a resilient cybersecurity ecosystem.

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DevSecOps Worst Practices – Tanya Janca

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Quite often when we read best practices we are told ‘what’ to do, but not the ‘why’. When we are told to ensure there are no false positives in the pipeline, the reason seems obvious, but not every part of DevOps is that intuitive, and not all ‘best practices’ make sense on first blush. Let’s explore tried, tested, and failed methods, and then flip them on their head, so we know not only what to do to avoid them, but also why it is important to do so, with these DevSecOps WORST practices.

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Workshop: Physical Pentesting Tools and Tricks with Dave Fletcher and Rick Wisser

DMG: Track 4 - Back Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Learn a few tricks of the trade right next to a real lock picking lab with eight doors. Rick Wisser and David Flethcer will take you through a few common Physical Security misconfigurations and how to abuse them. They will also discuss Rules of Engagement and how to "Blend in While Breaking In". Following the presentation, members of WWHF will be there to assist you performing door hacks, LIVE!

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Workshop: Point and Shoot to Continuous Auditing in the AWS Cloud – Andrew Krug

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

In 2023 cloud environments are becoming increasingly complex resulting in wide variety of misconfigurations. In this workshop you'll learn how to use point and shoot tools from the open ecosystem for cloud security assessments along with a few pro tips on how to segment and sandbox those. We will also dive into continuous auditing and how to setup long term dashboards for organizations to assess their maturity over time. Attendees will leave with a firm understanding of how to leverage the tools, articulate which method is better based on use case, and assume various roles (safely) in the AWS. Don't miss this session with AntiSiphon instructor Andrew Krug. Attendees should bring a laptop with any modern Linux virtual machine or MacOS.

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Vendor Booth Hours

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

In addition to all the workshops and talks, demos, and other events, we also have vendors who have come here to tell you all about their toys, software, and services! Take some time to say hello. We only invite cool people to our conference.

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Trace Labs Capture the Flag

DMG: Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Join the Trace Labs team while they host a 4 hour search party CTF during WWHF! Find key pieces of intelligence to help solve active missing persons cases. This CTF helps Law Enforcement and the Trace Labs team find active missing persons and sketch out a person's online footprint.

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Escape Room

DMG: Hotel Lobby - Kids Room Deadwood, SD, United States

Try to escape a paranormal attack if you can! The police quickly left the crime scene and now it is up to you to solve it. As you come onto the scene, something triggers. You are being watched, and if you stay too long, it may be too late. Can you solve it, or will you become the next victim?

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WWHF Hands-on Labs

DMG: Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

To help you hone your hacker skillz, and find the Truth that is Out There, we have a Bluetooth Lab, Keystoke Injection Lab, Doorbell Replay Lab, and so much more!

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Lock Picking Demo with Ed Miro

DMG: Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Ed Miro will be facilitating an open lockpicking area including practice locks and picks that will be available for you to play with.

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AD and DNS: A Match Made in Heck – Jim Sykora and Jake Hildreth

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Since the mid-80s, the Domain Name System (DNS) has been instrumental in improving the useability of computer networks and the Internet. In 2000, Microsoft released Active Directory (AD) which combined DNS with a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) database and Kerberos authentication to create a unified directory service platform. Since AD’s release, the fates of AD and DNS have been linked. In fact, you might say they are married. In this talk, we will discuss existing DNS attacks that can be used to compromise AD and the ways to mitigate AD-specific DNS vulnerabilities.

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What the Hack is Going on? An Offensive Look at Modern Breaches – Tim Medin

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Join this presentation for a comprehensive overview of modern cybersecurity threats and how breaches occur. We will highlight the various methods used by cybercriminals, including phishing, social engineering, and ransomware attacks, and emphasize the importance of identifying and addressing vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. There are a lot of vulnerabilities in the wild, and IT administrators and security professionals often focus on the wrong issues because they are easier to monitor or measure. By the end of the presentation, you will have gained valuable insights into the latest cybersecurity threats and how to protect against them.

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GraphRunner: A Post-Exploitation Toolset for M365 – Beau Bullock & Steve Borosh

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

During this presentation, I will provide an in-depth exploration of GraphRunner's features, showcasing its role in elevating post-exploitation strategies. Designed to empower both red team professionals and defenders, this toolset equips users with a means to navigate the intricate Graph API at the heart of M365 and manipulate it for offensive purposes. GraphRunner offers functionalities that aid in lateral movement, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, and persistence within M365 accounts. By offering practical demonstrations of the toolset's capabilities, this talk aims to bridge the gap between theoretical attack concepts and their tangible real-world application.

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Lunch

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

At WWHF, we want to make sure you don't faint from lack of vittles while you are busy hacking and learning and having other kinds of fun. Come on down to the Deadwood Mountain Grand and break bread with us!

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DevSecOps for Red Team Initial Access Operations – Joff Thyer

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

This presentation describes some of the challenges of malware development for Red Team initial access operations, and how continuous integration/continuous development (CICD) pipelines can be employed to assist in solving the challenges. The presentation will start by introducing some of the known techniques employed by modern endpoint defense software, and then describe how a CICD approach can be used to enable unique malware artifact production for bypass and initial access operational success. It is hoped that this presentation will stimulate ideas and discussion surrounding both source code obfuscation and related dynamically triggered child pipeline utilization.

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Hacking the Incident Response Team – Gerard Johansen

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Incident Response teams need to be more capable in responding to attacks than ever before. Threat actors are continually updating their TTPs and their ability to rapidly traverse target networks. A significant challenge IR teams face is the lack of opportunities to leverage their tools and processes on a routine basis. Annual technical training or the organization-wide Tabletop Exercise (TTX) is insufficient in preparing IR teams to address the challenges. What is needed is actual practice against a live threat actor.

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The Terminator Effect: AI’s Role in Fighting Cyber Threats – James McQuiggan

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

To effectively mitigate the risks associated with AI-based cybersecurity systems, it is crucial to implement a range of risk mitigation strategies, such as developing robust training datasets, multi-layered security architectures, industry-standard practices into accountability and transparency, and continuously monitoring and updating AI models. Additionally, organizations must prioritize the development of human-AI collaboration frameworks that enable seamless integration between human and AI-based cybersecurity systems.

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Tool Shed Demo: Elrond – Ben Smith

DMG: Track 4 - Back Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Python-written tool providing a one-liner command for accelerating the collection, processing, analysis and outputting of digital forensic artifacts.

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Tool Shed Demo: Ek47 – Kevin Clark

DMG: Track 4 - Back Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Badrats is an open-source Command and Control (C2) tool designed for initial access. Supporting 5 unique implants written in different languages, it allows operators to switch up their tradecraft on the fly depending on the defensive controls in place inside a client environment.

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The Truth is Out There: Solving the Mysteries of Lateral Movement Paths by Feeding Logs to the Hound – Olaf Hartong

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Introducing FalconHound, a toolkit that integrates with Microsoft Sentinel, Defender for Endpoint, the Azure Graph API, Neo4j and the BloodHound API to get the most out of your data. Some of its features allow it to track sessions, changes to the environment, alerts, and incidents on your entities and much, much more. All in near-real time!

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JS-Tap: Weaponizing JavaScript for Red Teams – Drew Kirkpatrick

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Red teams have a different set of challenges and opportunities that are often not conducive to developing tailored JavaScript payloads. Custom applications often have unknown functionality and require a generic payload. Red teams also have opportunities to introduce malicious JavaScript beyond XSS vulnerabilities.

A new open source tool (JS-Tap) will be introduced that is designed to allow red teamers to attack applications using generic JavaScript used as either a post exploitation implant or an XSS payload.

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Tool Shed Demo: OneDriveExplorer – Brian Maloney

DMG: Track 4 - Back Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

This presentation aims to walk through important One Drive artifacts, how to use OneDriveExplorer, and what value can be added from using OneDriveExplorer compared to conventionally used tools.

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Exfiltrate and Command Network Nodes Like a Ghost! – Momen Eldawakhly

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Our role as “red teamers” is to try developing techniques that simulate these activities and to improve organisational security by training defensive security teams to check for every single bit (not literally) of data and also anticipate the locations from which attackers may conduct their operations. The technique discussed in this research only shows the basic mindset that can be developed further with each engagement.

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The Rise of Large Language Models: Implications for Disinformation and the Future of Work – Heather Lawrence

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

This presentation will provide an overview of LLMs, including their strengths and limitations, and discuss how they are being used in disinformation campaigns. Additionally, the presentation will examine the potential impact of LLMs on the future of work, particularly in the field of computer security, and highlight the need for new strategies to deal with the increasing sophistication of LLM-generated attacks. The talk will conclude by discussing the ethical and social implications of LLMs, particularly in relation to job displacement and data privacy.

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Workshop: Incident Response for Humans – Nathan Case

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Today's DevOps world has several new responsibilities added to the everyday engineer's existence. For example, a developer often has to assist in incident response and threat hunts. Unfortunately, these skills are hard to learn and can come at a cost if they are done on the job while an event is ongoing.

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Tool Shed Demo: Aleph – Corey Ham

DMG: Track 4 - Back Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Join BHIS's Corey Ham as he teaches about Aleph! Aleph is a tool that can be utilized for ingesting and analyzing unstructured data from ransomware, leaks, or even internal file shares. Corey will demonstrate how to ingest and extract useful data and information using Aleph.

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Tool Shed Demo: pre-2k – Garrett Foster

DMG: Track 4 - Back Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Join Garret Foster as he teaches about pre-2k! Pre-2k is an Active Directory auditing tool that identifies the existence of computer accounts configured with pre-Windows 2000 compatibility (default password) or without a password entirely.

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That Shouldn’t Have Worked – An Intro to Evading AV/EDR – Corey Overstreet

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Endpoint protections are getting better every day. Attackers are having to change their tactics more and more to achieve execution which, in turn, makes it harder for red teams to emulate their attacks. In this talk, Corey Overstreet will be covering initial common methods used to get payloads around AV/EDR and application allow-listing.

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Demystifying Design: Making Infosec Look Good – Caitlin Cash

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Fonts are like pants for words. How you dress, how you speak, your non-verbal communication, is all part of what you convey to other people when interacting face to face. In graphics, design is that non-verbal portion of written communication. Here in the information security world, design can help facilitate that knowledge transfer, making content easier to understand, tools more identifiable, and interfaces more accessible.

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Steak Dinner!

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Wild West Hackin’ Fest is the only conference around where you get a genuine, cowboy-style steak dinner with all the trimmings!

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Calf Roping and Mechanical Bull

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

WWHF is the only hacking event where you can not only ride a mechanical bull, but you can even learn how to rope and tie a calf!

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Wild West Photos

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

At WWHF, we like to have fun! And in keeping with the wild west theme, we have a photographer on site to take old time style photos! Bring your own wild west costumes, or borrow some for the shoot from the goodies we will have there for you to use!

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Whose Slide is it? with Danny “Rand0h” Akacki 

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Ever had a dream where you were in front of hundreds of people waiting for you to give a presentation only to realize you’ve never seen the slides, don’t know the subject, and everyone there expects you to be the expert? Yes? Well buckle up because that dream becomes an entertaining dumpster fire of infosec proportions when you join us at Wild West Hackin’ Fest for Slide Show Roulette!

Run with BHIS

Deadwood Mountain Grand (DMG) 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Join us for a morning run! For all you athletes and people who enjoy running through beautiful places, this event is for you!

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WWHF Hands-on Labs

DMG: Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

To help you hone your hacker skillz, and find the Truth that is Out There, we have a Bluetooth Lab, Keystoke Injection Lab, Doorbell Replay Lab, and so much more!

Event Series Conference Registation

Conference Registration

Deadwood Mountain Grand (DMG) 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

The Registration Desk is your one-stop for checking in for the conference, getting your swag bag, finding out where things are happening, and so much more!

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Announcements with John Strand

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

John Strand makes a few opening remarks and announcements to welcome conference attendees and get the conference rolling.

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Campfire Talk: 5 Ways to be Successful in a Fortune 5 SOC – Ben Renz and Vidur Ravella

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

A quick talk covering the experiences of 2 former SOC analysts who started as associates going to senior and managers in the SOC. This talk with be addressing the 5 ways, we found out and trained others, to use to be successful when working in a SOC.

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Six Things DevOps Wants from InfoSec – Naomi Buckwalter

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Why does it seem that DevOps and Security are always at odds with each other? Why does Security have such a bad reputation among developers? In this talk, "Six Things DevOps Wants from InfoSec", you'll learn that developers actually WANT to work with Security - they care about writing secure code! But we as security professionals need to understand that developers don't want another "Big Brother" telling them what to do - they need an active and supportive partner in the delivery process. This talk will showcase six things that every DevOps teams want from their InfoSec teams. Everyone is on the same team, after all. Let's help DevOps accomplish their goal to release the best - and most secure - code possible.

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The Truth is Out There: Unveiling Secrets with Open Source Intelligence – Joe Gray

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

In an era where information is becoming the world's most valuable commodity, understanding how to access, analyze, and apply this resource effectively is critical. This talk, "The Truth is Out There: Unveiling Secrets with Open Source Intelligence," will demystify the world of OSINT and explore its role in today's digitally driven society.Much like the iconic television series "The X-Files," the sphere of Open Source Intelligence is filled with intrigue, suspense, and a relentless pursuit of truth. This talk will guide participants through the shadowy digital world, revealing how OSINT techniques enable us to expose hidden information, connect the dots, and discern the truth behind the often bewildering data cloud.

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Workshop: Practical Soldering – Rick Wisser

DMG: Track 4 - Back Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Are you interested in learning how to solder? Well you are in luck! This year Rick Wisser from BHIS has put together a soldering workshop where you can get some hands on experience soldering on a working project. Rick has several years of experience related to all types of soldering related to contract manufacturing of printed circuit boards. The goal of the workshop is to get you familiar with soldering and how to avoid common mistakes in solder techniques. Rick will share proper techniques, tips, and pointers that simplifies the manual soldering process.

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Trace Labs Capture the Flag

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Join the Trace Labs team while they host a 4 hour search party CTF during WWHF! Find key pieces of intelligence to help solve active missing persons cases. This CTF helps Law Enforcement and the Trace Labs team find active missing persons and sketch out a person's online footprint.

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Escape Room

DMG: Hotel Lobby - Kids Room Deadwood, SD, United States

Try to escape a paranormal attack if you can! The police quickly left the crime scene and now it is up to you to solve it. As you come onto the scene, something triggers. You are being watched, and if you stay too long, it may be too late. Can you solve it, or will you become the next victim?

Lock Picking Demo with Ed Miro

DMG: Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Ed Miro will be facilitating an open lockpicking area including practice locks and picks that will be available for you to play with.

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Vendor Booth Hours

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

In addition to all the workshops and talks, demos, and other events, we also have vendors who have come here to tell you all about their toys, software, and services! Take some time to say hello. We only invite cool people to our conference.

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Campfire Talk: I’m OK, You’re OK, We’re OK: Living with AD(H)D in Infosec – Klaus Agnoletti

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

I’ve been in Infosec for almost 20 years. I also have AD(H)D. This talk is my story; how I kept feeling something was off until diagnosed 3 years ago, what impact ADHD and being diagnosed had on my life and why one should always confront realities and get the best out of it. There is an overrepresentation of mental diagnoses in infosec. This is my attempt to educate, break down taboos and inspire others.

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Campfire Talk: Introducing RateMyAI: A Live Demo on Improving ChatGPT Conversations for Red and Blue Team Operations – Peter Halberg

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm. There seem to be so many new platforms popping up daily. AI platforms for red and blue teams already exist, but are they custom tailored to your organization’s environment? If not, then maybe it’s time to create your own.

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Rethinking Penetration Testing – Mike Saunders

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

The current model for traditional penetration testing is broken. The typical scan and exploit model doesn’t reflect how real attackers operate after establishing a foothold. Many organizations aren’t mature enough to need or benefit from a proper red team assessment. Organizations are often unsure how to approach a Purple Team

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Campfire Talk: Burp, Not Just For Browsers – Samantha Peters

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

My presentation would show how to proxy traffic through Burp Suite from an iPhone using a Mac OS, from Python, and from Postman. Capturing this traffic can allow for quick analysis that otherwise wouldn't be possible, and enable the use of repeater and intruder for potential exploitation.

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Campfire Talk: Modern Web Authentication: Passwords are so 1960’s – Greg Bailey

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

In this talk, we will walk through the various modern authentication protocols, specifically OAuth and its cousin, OpenID Connect, including the various code flows (code flow being the most important), how they work, their history of vulnerabilities, and how we can protect them.

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Penetration Testing: Communication is the Real Hack – Brandon Scholet

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Penetration testing success relies on effective communication with clients. This talk will address common frustrations and provide strategies for having smooth engagements, as well as insights for clients looking to understand how to get pentests to meet their goals. This will go over strategies to obtain necessary information such as client goals, pre-engagement, managing scope, and minimizing frustrating surprises. This talk will also talk about communicating findings in a way that helps clients understand and appreciate the security risks.

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Destroying the Fog of War: Demonstrating Realistic End-to-End Attacks and Detective Controls – Jeff McJunkin

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

This talk reveals the five ways outside attackers gain internal access and outlines defenders' three core objectives: reducing initial access, lowering detection and response time, and slowing down attackers. Through live demonstrations, real-world examples, and even a unique Mario Kart analogy, this talk provides actionable insights into detective controls and slowing down attackers.

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Campfire Talk: Why John Wayne Works: Social Engineering in the Wild Wild West – Todd Wedel

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

In social engineering engagements, especially physical, the culture of honor values play a significant role if the participants are in or have a background in a culture of honor. This talk will focus primarily on assertiveness and escalation avoidance.

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Campfire Talk: So My Credentials have been Leaked…Now What? – Dwayne McDaniel

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

This session will look at how to deal with credential leaks from detection through closing the final related ticket the incident generated. We will look at topics such as validation of secrets, scoping impact, assembling the right players, to how to offload tribal knowledge with tools like notebooks and playbooks. We will also look at preventing future leaks with some open source tools and non-intrusive workflow adjustments.

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Lunch

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

At WWHF, we want to make sure you don't faint from lack of vittles while you are busy hacking and learning and having other kinds of fun. Come on down to the Deadwood Mountain Grand and break bread with us!

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Workshop: Automating Attacks – Alex Martirosyan

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

With the latest advancements of attack and breach simulation tools, many organizations are still playing catchup to know where to begin. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools have become heavily relied upon with default configurations. As an industry, we have pushed a lot of the responsibility of managed service providers without fully understanding what we are signing up for. This workshop will help beginners understand what the latest buzzwords mean such as Atomic Testing, Micro Emulation Plans, and Purple Teaming.

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Making Magnets for Needles in Noisy Haystacks: Operationalizing ATT&CK with Risk Based Alerting – Haylee Mills

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

MITRE ATT&CK helps us identify threats, prioritize data sources, and improve security posture, but how do we actualize those insights for better detection and alerting? We shift to alerts on aggregated behaviors over direct alerts, and make our noisy datasets into valuable treasure troves tagged with ATT&CK metadata. Let's discuss the key features needed to implement this in any security toolset!

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Six Ways to Defend Better RN – David Kennedy

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Running two large sized companies that both focus on breaking into companies as well as defending them has helped put things into perspectives on both successes and failures from a defense perspective. This talk will dive into some of the most common methods attackers go after organizations, but focus on non traditional ways of defending the network against them. We'll be diving into prevention, detection, deception, AI (or lack thereof and marketing fluff), and much more. Let's cut right down to it, and walk away with six things you can do today to better defend and identify attacks earlier in the attack cycle.

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Workshop:  Intro to Social Engineering – Ed Miro

DMG: Track 4 - Back Stage 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

“Intro to Social Engineering” is a 2-hour course that will provide students an extensive crash course in the study, practice, and defense of social engineering. The course will include interactive elements/technology designed to make the session fun and engaging. In this course we will clearly define ‘social engineering’, cover the most common attack vectors utilized in this domain, and explore the history & development of social engineering.

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Cybersecurity for the “Have-Nots” of the World – Jake Williams

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

The cybersecurity landscape can broadly be broken down into dividing between the “haves” vs the “have-nots.” The security recommendations offered by so many of “just deploy X” fall on deaf ears to the *vast majority* of organizations who fall into the latter category of “have-nots.” Until the security gap for the “have-nots” of the world is closed, we’re doomed to continue failing at security overall (/screams in “software supply chain”).

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So you delivered your report, now what? The role of pentesting and continuous validation – Dan DeCloss

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

We all know that delivering the final pentest report isn’t the end of the road. It's really just the beginning — and it should be. Annual pentests are becoming a thing of the past in favor of strategies that involve shorter iterative cycles of testing, remediation, and validation. So where does pentesting fit into a continuous validation paradigm? This talk will overlay the pentesting and continuous validation life cycles to show how pentesters can deliver more value post engagement and set the stage for their organizations or clients to conduct more frequent, more productive pentests.

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Workshop: How to triumph at Tech Support – Bill Stearns

DMG: Track 3 - Hotel Lobby Meeting Room 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

This course focuses on the process of tech support, the core skills needed, and the lessons learned from years of making tech support mistakes. Join instructor Bill Stearns in talking about the role of Support, the Troubleshooting process, and common issues you'll encounter in your career.

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The Lost Underground – Ray and Mike Felch

DMG: Track 1 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Take an exhilarating journey back in time to the 80s, 90s, and 00s as this father and son duo reveal what it was like to get started in an untamed security landscape populated by ruthless hackers. Join us for a captivating presentation as we delve into the intriguing world of the lost underground scene, revealing the stories, techniques, and culture that defined this rebellious era.

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Immunity, Free Speech, and the (Potential) Death of the Internet: A Section 230 Update – Kelli Tarala

DMG: Track 2 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

There is a potential shift in Internet law with a lively debate surrounding it. Has Big Tech taken over free speech and political discourse? Are algorithms deciding our future? This year, the Supreme Court will be hearing the case Gonzalez v. Google LLC, in which the plaintiff asserts that Google's algorithm allows ISIS recruitment videos to be presented to young, impressionable youths. The Gonzalez's legal team asserts that Google as the publisher of the content is at least partially responsible for their daughter's death in the Islamic State attack in Paris in 2015.

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Keynote: Building a Winning Team Culture: Unleashing the Power of Collaboration and Excellence – Heath Adams

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

In today's fast-paced and competitive world, organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of building a winning team culture to drive success. In this keynote, we will explore the key elements of fostering a team culture that fuels collaboration, innovation, and excellence. We will delve into the significance of leadership and its role in setting a clear vision, values, and goals that align with the team's purpose. By cultivating an environment of trust, respect, and open communication, we can empower team members to bring their best selves to work and contribute to the collective success.

Event Series Conference

Awards with John Strand

DMG: General Session Area 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

John Strand makes a few closing remarks and award announcements to bid farewell to conference attendees and get the conference closed out.

Wild West Hackin’ Fest

Deadwood Mountain Grand (DMG) 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Wild West Hackin’ Fest is the most happenin infosec conference on any side of the Mississippi!

Wild West Hackin’ Fest @ Mile High 2025

Deadwood Mountain Grand (DMG) 1906 Deadwood Mountain Drive, Deadwood, SD, United States

Wild West Hackin’ Fest is the most happenin infosec conference on any side of the Mississippi!