Once again, it is the time of the year to travel to Grand Rapids to partake in one of the best cybersecurity conferences in the Midwest, GrrCon. Last year was my first time attending and I had a blast. From last year’s convention, I joined the MISec group. Through meeting an old compatriot from my CCDC days,I got with individuals from across the state via a very active Discord server and their monthly local meetings.

This year that group made the difference. Being able to attend with friends had allowed for a really rewarding experience the second time around. Not just from a social aspect, but also as a way to continue to learn and discover topics that both interests me and things that I find fascinating but not want to do daily.

If you have never attended a conference, I feel you owe it to yourself to attend. if I had started attending earlier in my career, I would have been able to reap the benefits from both a social networking standpoint and a career standpoint. If you can not attend a convention, then join a local chapter of ISACA, ISC2, CSA, or whoever you can find on LinkedIn. Get connected, be respectful to all people (regardless of sex/race/religion/identity), have an open mind and be willing to learn.

Speaking of connecting, let’s talk Meshtastic.

So over the summer I got interested in Meshtastic. The gross oversimplification of it is think text messaging with stupid cheap radio. No licensing required, cost of entry is <$100, encryption optional. It’s a stupid fun little project and after watching an episode of Destination Linux, I picked up the H1 from MuziWorks. I had gotten it to work via MQTT (internet connected) but I had yet to use it the way it was intended, purely RF via a meshed network.

That changed at GrrCon.

At most I saw about 12 different Meshtastic nodes online with an average of 9 at one time. It as great to be able to have a one time chat room to get real time information. The beat being when a vendor with a radio announced they had doughnuts.

Seeing Meshtastic in action got me thinking, for conventions, just having a quick simple radio that doesn’t need infrastructure, or anyone to set something up, is amazing. I would not be shocked if next year, I see double the number of nodes as Meshtastic continues to grow in radio and hacker communities.

Some additional links and thoughts:

Mental Health Hackers - Spoke with Amanda who was running the booth. Great organization and if you need help, always reach out to someone Also right next to the Blumira booth who announced they had doughnuts on Meshtastic.

If you missed Kevin Mitchell’s talk on CVE-2023-52709 then man, you missed a really cool talk

A great presentation by Gabe Schuyler that I was unfortunatly not able to grab the book Will be my next read after the Defensive Security Handbook (thank you again Amanda) and the free book Recorded Future handed out.

Thank you again to everyone who I got to hang out with at the convention. Hope to catch you all at MISecCon in November or on Discord.

With that, 73’s.