We all have someone or something we want to protect. Understanding your threat model, the basics of secure communication, and how to protect your privacy and digital devices is essential to staying safe. This talk focuses on assessing risk, account security and understanding your digital footprint.

Topic Title: Survivor to Hunter: An Overcomer’s Story of Surviving Domestic Violence and Cult Control

Katelyn Bowden is a hacker, an activist, and a community manager. She is a member of the famed hacker collective, the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) since 2020. She previously was the founder and CEO of BADASS, a nonprofit dedicated to eradicating revenge porn. Currently, Katelyn is the CMO and Cofounder of the Veilid Project, as well as a board member for the Veilid Foundation- a nonprofit dedicated to developing apps with privacy built in, on the Veilid network. In her spare time, Katelyn creates cursed artwork and nightmare sculptures.

From Hobby to Career

From a young age, she has enjoyed exploring and deconstructing technology to learn more about how it works. At 12 years-old, she bought her first computer. From that $1,000 purchase, she launched a hobby that would later become her career. Just seven years later, she was hired to her first full-time salary job as a programmer.

In the vein of old school Choose Your Own Adventures, this is a custom created story that leads the audience through an incident response including technical and business considerations. The audience votes through a live poll on decision points in the story including detection, identification, response, remediation, and threat hunting for like compromises. Communication with the appropriate stakeholders and your team is key throughout the phases. The core "story" will be the majority of the session, but will generate significant discussion and Q&A. After the talk, we will release a free tool that will allow the audience to continue to play and learn on their own through the different decision points.

"I created this exercise (and corresponding tool) as a new way to engage an audience to teach Blue Team concepts in process, organizational considerations, and technical techniques beyond the standard Powerpoint lecture. It has been play-tested with over 1000 players and found that it works well from beginner to expert level in facilitating discussion and insights."

I will present the playbook used to assist domestic abuse victims in detangling their domestic abuser from their digital footprint. This talk is the core of our intake process at OSE, where I provide a methodology to identify the most common methods of domestic stalking that a non-technical person can use to assist a survivor.

I cover cellular, social media, financial, and fiscal areas where most attackers can be mitigated as well as proper documentation steps to assist the end user.

For most of us, our lives are kept on our mobile devices. We keep pictures there. Our schedules. Our communication. Even our finances. For anyone, the impact of a data breach or security incident is immeasurable, but for survivors of abuse it can be a matter of life and death. Ruddy Wang shares techniques for securing mobile devices even when the abuser has access to them.

Tails, "The Amnesiac Incognito Live System," is a computer operating system designed to protect the user. Because it usually boots from a USB drive, it bypasses the computer's hard drive and doesn't leave a trace of what's been done. This can allow a survivor to communicate with their support system or search for resources without leaving signs on a shared computer. This talk will show how to configure and use Tails safely.

Chris Cox is the Director of Operation Safe Escape, founder and past president of the Operations Security Professional's Association, and general security nerd. In addition to his work with OSE, past professional roles include CIO of the U.S. Army National Training Center, Cybersecurity Instructor for the DoD, OPSEC Analyst for the Department of Energy, and multiple other infosec roles.