Benjamin Speckien

Benjamin Speckien is a veteran of the digital trenches, a cybersecurity professional who's successfully managed to keep the $200M+ cloud assets at cLabs from becoming a thrilling news headline. As their former Head of Security, he didn't just "lead" incident response; he personally ensured over 500 potential dumpster fires were quickly extinguished, achieving a mean time to detect (MTTD) in mere seconds thanks to some clever cloud security posture management. He's a certified, degree-holding hacker (CISSP, M.S. in Cybersecurity) with expertise spanning the Financial, Defense, and Blockchain sectors. When he's not busy making software supply chains less of a liability, you can probably find him contemplating the simple, secure life back in the peaceful Northwoods of Wisconsin.


Session

02-16
10:10
20min
Safeguarding Your Digital Footprint: A Privacy-First Approach to Web3 OPsec
Benjamin Speckien

Wireless networks, a ubiquitous and often overlooked element of Web3 projects, pose a significant operational security (OPSEC) risk due to a phenomenon called "beaconing." As mobile devices move, they publicly disseminate personally identifiable information (PII) that malicious actors can combine with open-source intelligence (OSINT) to infer a user's travel plans, physical addresses, past conference attendance, associated crypto projects, and even the location of hardware wallets. This vulnerability contributes to the increasing threat of physical attacks (such as kidnapping and ransom, or "wrench attacks") and social engineering, as well as the risk of disclosing material nonpublic information.

This workshop will walk attendees through using readily available tools to collect and analyze everyday wireless signals. Hardware crypto wallets will be made available for analysis. Other secure tooling will be observed. Will there be enough information in the room to identify devices, individuals, crypto wealth? We will see.

Privacy
Auditorium