The second international conference on practical cybersecurity OFFZONE 2019 will be held in Moscow on June 17–18, 2019, as part of the Global Cyber Week. One of the key speakers at OFFZONE will be Alexander Matrosov, a well-known cybersecurity researcher.

Alexander is a leading offensive researcher of hardware and firmware for NVIDIA’s main product lines. With more than 20 years of research experience internationally, he has excelled in cybersecurity covering fields like reversing, analyzing the most complex malicious programs, developing operating methods for firmware that prevent the bypassing of security systems.

The evolution of security software has a direct correlation with the development of the modern spectrum of threats. If each new phase of evolution is aimed at closing gaps in methods of detection or algorithms for collecting and analyzing data about possible attacks, consequently, the main direction of development of complex threats, rootkits, and, later, bootkits was evident from the very beginning—finding the most effective methods to counter the detection and long-term contamination of the system attacked.

“The constant arms race in stamping digital signatures for OS kernel modules, reducing the accessibility to the kernel for developers, and the widespread use of Secure Boot methods have led to a new evolution of threats,” says Alexander Matrosov. “Today there is a clear tendency on the part of the attacker, which is to persist to lower and lower levels in the system. And this displacement vector is actively shifting toward the hardware (firmware/hardware implants).”

In his report “The evolution of complex threats: the arms race between the analyst and the attacker,” Alexander will review the approaches to reverse analysis and forensics through the prism of the evolution of complex threats, and how they have changed recently. He will also cover blind spots in defense systems, focusing on what needs to be improved to continue the race toward a more effective protection.

If you are interested in giving a talk and presenting your research at OFFZONE 2019, you are welcome to apply to CFP before April 29, 2019.

Report formats:

• Talk: 45 minutes, the presentation shall be in English, the talk itself may be in Russian or English.
• Fast track: 15 minutes, the presentation shall be in English, the talk itself may be in Russian or English.
• Tool.Zone: exhibition stand for 4 hours, the presentation is optional, the talk may be in Russian or English.

All applications are to be reviewed by the CFP committee, which is comprised of web applications and corporate system security experts, malware, low-level software, and hardware researchers.