Want to get up close and personal with Talos researchers?

Then be sure to stick around for the second half of “Hacker Summercamp:” Defcon. After our series of talks at Blackhat, we’re headed elsewhere on the strip for Defcon.

Specifically, we’ll have a huge presence at this year’s Blue Team Village, where you can speak with our researchers, test your threat detection and prevention skills and even get a few tips on your resume.

This year’s Defcon runs from Aug. 8 – 11, and the Blue Team Village specifically runs Aug. 9 – 11 — look for us just past the main entrance near the three stages. Here’s a rundown of what you can expect to see from us at Defcon, and start preparing for our challenges now.

Blue Team reverse-Capture the Flag  Our researchers are crafting a reverse-Capture the Flag challenge that will test how well you know protection.

There will be multiple virtual machines used for the games, and it’ll be up to our participants to patch vulnerabilities specifically to stop the “attacker” from entering your system.

This challenge will teach you to work with defensive mechanisms and respond to a variety of scenarios.

Snort rules challenge  We’ll present participants will several packets that are going to be vulnerable to a vulnerability-to-be-named later. It’ll be up to you to write a Snort rule that will catch it across the wire.

This challenge is perfect for anyone from beginners to advanced researchers. So even if you are brand new to Snort, you can stop on by. If you impress us in the CTF and Snort challenges, you may even be hearing from us again.

Oil rig pumpjacks

Ever wanted to blow up an oil rig? We won’t exactly let you do that, but you can get close on a micro scale.

We’ll have several of our hackable pumpjack models out in the village for you to work with. Participants need to defend the models with an unauthenticated protocol to keep them from “overheating.”

The best part? We’ll have the pumpjacks open to the entire Defcon network, so you could be facing off against someone from across the conference floor.

For more information on these pumpjacks, you can check out our initial blog post on the models.

“Ask Talos at BTV”  Need to freshen up your resume? Have no idea how to get into the threat-hunting business? Just want to ask us a question?

We’ll have recruiters and researchers on site to answer any questions you may have about job searching, working with (or at) Talos and even some resume pointers.