Security Ripcord

A little over a week ago a few security bloggers received some information about the Hack In The Box Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Well, the crew at HITBSecConf 2007 noticed my post. A few days later I received a reply from them in an email that outline a better way to get to KL from the USA. Here is what they had to say:

Dear Cutaway,

On behalf of the HITB team, I wanted to thank you for your kind write up
on Hack In The Box Security Conf. 2007 Kuala Lumpur (CutawaySecurity, 23
April).

You are right, our Call for Paper ends tomorrow (1st May) so we have yet
to finalise the presentation list for HITBSecConf KL. We’re not sure if
SensePost will be joining us again this year – Roelof Temmingh did come
down in 2005. We’ll definitely let you know once we announce the complete
lineup of speakers.

The team got a kick out of hearing that you have been to Kuala Lumpur
before, and we would definitely like to have you come down again and join
us this year! We understand it’s kind of cost-prohibitive for you, but we
can try to help you lower the costs to help you come down. Here’s a few
options:

1. As Malaysian Airlines (MAS) is our official airline partner, we do have
special rates if you choose to fly with them. Just quote HITBSecConf when
making your booking with MAS.

Their nearest office to Texas is here:
Address : 100 North Sepulveda Blvd, LA, Suite 400, El Segundo
California 90245 U.S.A.
Reservations : 310 535 9288
Ticketing : 310 535 9088

2. The conference venue is HILTON Kuala Lumpur Hotel (commonly referred to
as HILTON KL Sentral), with whom we also have HITBSecConf rates, at
approximately USD135.00 – MYR465++ per night. Please quote “HITB SECURITY
CONFERENCE” when making your reservation.

Since the hotel rates work on a reverse sliding scale, it’s cheaper to
book it early. Now at five months to the conference the rate is USD120,
but this will increase as September nears.

If you can let us know the budget you can work with we can also look for
alternative accommodation for you in Kuala Lumpur (USD50 – USD100/night)
at a convenient location to reach our conference venue.

3. The conference venue is linked to KL’s Sentral Station which houses a
variety of food outlets of different cuisines – Malay, Chinese,
Continental, American – yes, the ubiquitous geek-friendly McDonald’s is
also there .

The venue hotel is also right beside KL’s Little India so you will
certainly be spoilt (sic) for choices and at prices that can make your food and
snacks budget go a long way.

4. Conference Shirt – We’ll give this one to you complimentary so that’s
another $30 you can save…

Okay, naturally we can’t help knock it all down to US$50, but try and come
down if you can. I know the team doesn’t want to wait until HITB 2107 to
ask about your Batu Caves experience!

Hope your week is starting well, and do let me know if there’s any other
way we can help you work out a trip to join us this year.

Warmest regards,
[snip]
CREW
Hack In The Box

http://conference.hackinthebox.org

I am not sure if this is low enough to get me to come out but it sure does put it back into the price range for somebody willing to take a working vacation.

I also received a few interesting comments. Christian Heinrich points out that it seems few people attend these events and that he missed the Call for Papers (possibly from lack of advertisement). I’ll have to admit that this was the first time I have heard about this conference and I would have missed submitting a paper if I had been interested. I’m not sure how many vendors send their representatives overseas but I imagine that the ones who do attend are the larger American based companies or Asian, European, and Australian vendors who probably do a lot of business in this part of the world. Of course I am just guessing as I do not have any specific statistics.

What is funny is that fact that HITB appears to be following what we called a WestPac in the United States Marine Corps. A WestPac is a six month tour of Indonesia and the Middle East. I say this because in addition to multiple dates in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia the HITB Crew was in Dubai and Bahrain for some of their previous conferences albeit spread out over several years.

I believe that we are going to be seeing more and more of this in the future. Although attendance may not match some of the security conferences here in the states I do believe that international conferences are growing in importance and receiving long overdue attention. We have seen this with Black Hat Europe, ISSE/Secure 2007, RSA Europe, and RSA Asia just to mention a few. Hopefully there will be a conference in Perth, Australia and I can go back to the Sail and Anchor, drink their beer, and talk with some truly friendly Australians.

Go forth and do good things,
Cutaway

Technorati Tags: Security Ripcord, HITBSecConf2007, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, RSA Europe, RSA Asia, ISSE/Secure 2007, Black Hat Europe

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