Hack In The Box 2012 Malaysia: Like No Other

Hack In The Box SecConf 2012 Malaysia just celebrated its ten-year mark in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Hack In The Box stages its high-profile hacker conferences in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, bringing together an unusual mix of security professionals, members of the hacker underground, researchers and - yes - law enforcement.

Nowhere else in the world will you see a sponsor list with entities such as Megaupload and Microsoft side-by-side, teams of hackers from around the world in a network hacking competition themed around global thermonuclear war, hands-on tutoring on how to escape handcuffs, and arrest warrants up for charity auction.

We were on hand to see it all.

The conference took place at luxury Hotel Intercontinental, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

A calm shot of registration before the storm - the conference was packed and attendance was capped at 1010 attendees.

A fistful of Hack In The Box badges.

The main hall, just at the entrance in the early morning before it became packed with hackers, shoulder-to-shoulder.

The Hack In The Box merchandise tables.

"Do you want to play a game?"

The start of HiTB's extremely competitive Capture The Flag game, with hacker teams competing in person from varied countries such as Vietnam, Iran and more. The 32-hour game had a global thermonuclear war theme.

The Capture The Flag Team HTV (Vietnam).

Photo by Mel Mudin is under Creative Commons 2.0 and used with express permission.

The Capture The Flag 'global thermonuclear war' map as the game played out. 

Japanese Team Sutegoma2 won for the second year in a row and walked away with the $3133.7 (USD) cash prize.

Photo by Mel Mudin is under Creative Commons 2.0 and used with express permission.

Capture The Flag - Team Hondorioz (Iran).

Photo by Mel Mudin is under Creative Commons 2.0 and used with express permission.

Amazon's table at Hack In The Box - it was there for security team recruitment.

At the end of one hall, Toool's fun hands-on lockpicking demonstrations and workshops ran both days of the triple track conference.

A hacker learning how to get out of handcuffs at Toool's Hack In The Box table.

A slide at Toool's popular lockpicking table showing a cutaway on a handcuff lock mechanism.

Speaker Chris Wysopal (Veracode) during his Hack In The Box talk, Data Mining A Mountain of Vulnerabilities. 

Hacker Felix FX Lindner (Recurity Labs) during his explosive, headline-making talk Hacking Huawei VRP.

The main hall during the height of the conference and at the apex of Capture The Flag.

Photo by Mel Mudin is under Creative Commons 2.0 and used with express permission.

A happy crew: Hack In The Box CEO and Founder Dhillon 'l33tdawg' Kannanbrhian; Co-Founder of Toool.us and Co-Founder of College of Lockpicking Eric Michaud; Hack In The box core crew and Team Lead for Hack In The Box Netherlands Barry 'fish' van Kampen.

Fun items on HiTB's charity auction table. The auction raised a staggering MYR23,980 for Mount Miriam’s Needy Cancer Patient Fund.

Photo by Mel Mudin is under Creative Commons 2.0 and used with express permission.

Charity auction item: Roberto Preatoni's arrest warrant.

All proceeds from the charity auction went to the Needy Cancer Patient Fund managed by Mount Miriam Cancer Hospital - a cancer hospital on the island of Penang, in the North of Malaysia whose goal is to make treatment affordable to all cancer patients regardless of race, religion or financial situation.

Photo by Mel Mudin is under Creative Commons 2.0 and used with express permission.

Charity auction item: Fredrik Neij's Pirate Bay T-shirt. Other items included a one-of-a-kind Microsoft custom-designed XBox 360, the Pwnium 2 team laptop and Apple accessories signed by the iOS JailBreak Dream Team.

Photo by Mel Mudin is under Creative Commons 2.0 and used with express permission.

Right around the corner from conference location Hotel Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur are the gorgeous and famous Petronas Twin Towers - this shot is from the night before the conference began.