Aerospace Village at DEF CON 29

[The Dark Tangent]

https://aerospacevillage.org/

DEF CON Discord Channel

The Aerospace Village at DEF CON will encompass all aspects of the aerospace sector ranging from airports, air traffic management, aircraft and space.

The aviation and space industries, security researchers, and the public share a common goal: safe, reliable, and trustworthy aviation and space operations. For too long, negative perceptions and fractured trust on all sides have held back collaboration between the aviation, space, and security researcher communities that has advanced safety, reliability, and security of other industries. As the traditional domains of aviation safety and cybersecurity increasingly overlap, more effective collaboration between stakeholders ensures we will be safer, sooner, together.

Through the Aerospace Village, the security research community invites industry leaders, researchers and academia interested in aviation and space security, safety, and resilience to attend, understand, collaborate together to achieve our common goals. Empathy and understanding build common ground, while acts and words likely to increase division between these two communities undermine these efforts. The Aerospace Village welcomes those who seek to improve aviation and space security, safety, and resilience through positive, productive collaboration among all ecosystem stakeholders.

Our Goal
The Aerospace Village is a volunteer team of hackers, pilots, and policy advisors who come from the public and private sectors. We believe the flying public deserves safe, reliable, and trustworthy air travel which is highly dependent on secure aviation and space operations.

Our Mission
Create, sustain, and grow an inclusive community focused on aerospace cybersecurity;

Inspire the next generation of aerospace cybersecurity leaders;
Promote and develop aerospace cybersecurity expertise and knowledge.

The Aviation Village will do this by:
- Building connections, trust, and understanding among all Village participants.
- Developing aerospace security skills among DEF CON attendees through workshops and hands-on activities.
- Promoting constructive dialog through talks and interaction.

[hdanielson]

so excited woo hoo the convergence of Space and Cybersecurity is Awesome ! Stay tuned news coming soon!

[testfire10]

I'm curious if anyone would be interested in a _non-security_ related talk about some of the hardware on the Mars 2020 (Perseverance) rover. I helped design one of the robotic arms on the rover, but it would not be related to software or security. I come to DEFCON to learn more about those things as a hobby.

[number6]

I'm curious if anyone would be interested in a _non-security_ related talk about some of the hardware on the Mars 2020 (Perseverance) rover. I helped design one of the robotic arms on the rover, but it would not be related to software or security. I come to DEFCON to learn more about those things as a hobby.

There has been interest in engineering and design, but what is often of greater interest at DEF CON are elements of "hacking" in the design process, and how knowledge was leveraged to find a different way to solve a problem in an unconventional and novel way. Almost any form of creation or invention has opportunity for "hacking" in the broadest sense.

Even in early DEF CON, hacking wasn't always about security, and bypassing security controls. Hacking was more inclusive to cover innovative and interesting solutions to problems. Hacking was a description of the process of knowing about a thing so well, a person was able to bend the system and possibly violate standards, or rules or guidelines to create a functional solution.

Writing only for myself (as I am not a member of the CFP review board, or part of this village) submitting an idea for a "talk" based on the process of moving from nothing to finished product, discussing failures which helped you find a better solution or improve your process or learn something which allowed you to "break" conventional rules to solve problems could be an informative and entertaining talk.

Want an example? There are problems in physics where interactions between objects in 3 dimensional space need to be examined, which can be computationally intensive and mathematically difficult. However, some problems lend themselves well to reducing the framework to flatten the problem to 2 dimensions. Recognizing when an entire dimension can be removed from a problem is huge.

Another? There are complicated selections in databases which can take a very long time to complete, but if a DBA recognizes mathematical equivalence in logic, they can create a query which is equivalent, but changes the selection and query. Same result, but less time and energy. The discovery of things like this for the first time is hacking.

None of these alone are likely to be a full talk at DEF CON, but as examples, maybe they show you content that attendees would be interested in learning about.

As for security, it isn't just about preventing unauthorized access, or breaking into systems to violate rules for unauthorized access. Security is also about reliability, long-term support, reduction of down-time, audit-trails and telemetry to monitor elements for health and identify problems to fix them before they become worse.

More advice: If you haven't submitted a talk before, try it. If you submit a talk to the main DEF CON CFP board for one of the tracks for talks, the CFP board has a long history of providing specific and direct feedback to the person that submitted a talk. Sometimes, they will encourage you to make changes and submit it again. If you find it intimidating to speak in a large crowd, try out a talk at a local DEF CON Group, or other user group.

[testfire10]

There has been interest in engineering and design, but what is often of greater interest at DEF CON are elements of "hacking" in the design process, and how knowledge was leveraged to find a different way to solve a problem in an unconventional and novel way. Almost any form of creation or invention has opportunity for "hacking" in the broadest sense.

Even in early DEF CON, hacking wasn't always about security, and bypassing security controls. Hacking was more inclusive to cover innovative and interesting solutions to problems. Hacking was a description of the process of knowing about a thing so well, a person was able to bend the system and possibly violate standards, or rules or guidelines to create a functional solution.

Writing only for myself (as I am not a member of the CFP review board, or part of this village) submitting an idea for a "talk" based on the process of moving from nothing to finished product, discussing failures which helped you find a better solution or improve your process or learn something which allowed you to "break" conventional rules to solve problems could be an informative and entertaining talk.

Want an example? There are problems in physics where interactions between objects in 3 dimensional space need to be examined, which can be computationally intensive and mathematically difficult. However, some problems lend themselves well to reducing the framework to flatten the problem to 2 dimensions. Recognizing when an entire dimension can be removed from a problem is huge.

Another? There are complicated selections in databases which can take a very long time to complete, but if a DBA recognizes mathematical equivalence in logic, they can create a query which is equivalent, but changes the selection and query. Same result, but less time and energy. The discovery of things like this for the first time is hacking.

None of these alone are likely to be a full talk at DEF CON, but as examples, maybe they show you content that attendees would be interested in learning about.

As for security, it isn't just about preventing unauthorized access, or breaking into systems to violate rules for unauthorized access. Security is also about reliability, long-term support, reduction of down-time, audit-trails and telemetry to monitor elements for health and identify problems to fix them before they become worse.

More advice: If you haven't submitted a talk before, try it. If you submit a talk to the main DEF CON CFP board for one of the tracks for talks, the CFP board has a long history of providing specific and direct feedback to the person that submitted a talk. Sometimes, they will encourage you to make changes and submit it again. If you find it intimidating to speak in a large crowd, try out a talk at a local DEF CON Group, or other user group.

This is really great feedback. I'm going to think about whether it makes sense to submit something on this subject. And now, I am going to try and find local DEFCON groups, which I did not know existed previously. Thank you.

[lux]

I'm hoping we get to meet in person! I would love to chat about how this might be able to fit into our schedule in future years!