Ruxcon, a conference organised by and for the Australian computer security community last weekend, witnessed a gathering of around 300 security enthusiasts and consultants.
The inaugural two-day conference covered a myriad of topics including defensive and offensive security issues, GSM mobile phone security, secure web applications development and assembly programming.
It wasn't a conventional conference by many standards but one which left Alistair MacGibbon pleasantly surprised.
The coordinator for high tech crime unit of the Australian Federal Police took to the stage with apprehension at first. But in the end, -I was impressed...I felt like I had a fair hearing," MacGibbon said.
"While there might have been philosophical differences, I thought there was a pleasant atmosphere for the police officers who were involved," he added.
"Our stated aim was to come to the conference as a community policing exercise," MacGibbon told ZDNet Australia . -Given the alternative nature of the conference, I thought people behaved really well. I was also pleasantly surprised by the engaging issues I was able to discuss".
Educating attendees on what is and isn't legal under commonwealth cyber crime laws was also an aim, MacGibbon said.
One Ruxcon organiser, Jake Wallace, said the authorities were quite pro-active. -I initially approached the federal police for advice on the legality of such a conference... [and] they actually offered to present," he said.
Another highlight of the event was the -capture the flag" hacking challenge, where participants attempted to break in to a server on the Ruxcon local area network and secure it from further intrusions from other entrants.
Corporate security consultants also had a heavy presence at the conference. "I thought it was great...I don't think there was anything bad going on, everyone was behaving themselves," said information security consultant Patrick Webster, adding he would attend if the event returned next year.
