I was pretty bummed this year when I found out that a previous engagement would prevent me from traveling to Las Vegas for the annual back-to-back Black Hat and Defcon security conventions. But I must say I am downright cranky that I will be missing MalCon, a conference being held in Mumbai later this year that is centered around people in the “malcoder community.”
According to the conference Web site, MalCon is “the worlds [sic] first platform bringing together Malware and Information Security Researchers from across the globe to share key research insights into building the next generation malwares. Spread across the world, malcoders now have a common platform to demonstrate expertise, get a new insight and be a part of the global MALCODER community. This conference features keynotes, technical presentations, workshops as well as the EMERGING CHALLENGES of creating undetectable stealthy malware.”
The call for papers shows that this security conference is encouraging malware writers of all shapes, ages and sizes to bring and share their creations. “We are looking for new techniques, tool releases,unique research and about anything that’s breath-taking, related to Malwares. If your presentation, when given with all its valid techno-Jargon can give our moderators a head-ache, you are right up there. The papers and research work could be under any of the broad categories mentioned below. You can submit working malwares as well.”
Among the “malwares” encouraged are novel phishing kits, botnets and mobile phone-based malware, malware creation tools, cross-platform malware infection techniques, and new malware self-defense mechanisms, such as anti-virus exploitation techniques.
At first, I didn’t know what to make of this conference, which was initially brought to my attention by a clueful source in the botnet underground. My hoaxmeter went positively bonkers after I pinged both of the e-mail addresses listed on the site and each e-mail bounced.
