An Army "hacker con" goes big: The return of AvengerCon

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/an-army-hacker-con-goes-big-the-return-of-avengercon/

By Sean Gallagher
Ars Technica
10/30/2019

COLUMBIA, Md. -- In a business park that plays home to a number of tech 
and cybersecurity firms situated strategically between Washington, DC, and 
Baltimore, there's a two-story building that looks externally like many 
other office buildings, remarkable this day only for the food trucks in 
the parking lot and the stream of people in camouflage swarming in and 
out. The building, called DreamPort, is a collaboration facility leased by 
US Cyber Command—and on October 18, it was the location of AvengerCon IV, 
the latest incarnation of a soldier-led cybersecurity training event that 
takes the shape of a community hacking conference.

The event also offered USCYBERCOM a chance to show off DreamPort—and a chance 
for me to meet with David Luber, the Executive Director of USCYBERCOM.

"AvengerCon is an event that is attracting the very best talent both from our 
DoD participants and also from some of the folks that are working with us 
outside of the DoD," Luber said. "When you bring those very best cyber experts 
together, they get to learn, test out new ideas, and work in an environment 
that is hosted by and for DoD cyber operations community experts. They're 
working in a community of peers—they get to learn together, they get to fail 
together. And what we've seen from previous activities with AvengerCon is that 
it's an exhilarating, fun environment for them to work in, and they learn a ton 
while they're here. And the private sector benefits because as AvengerCon 
shows, we're all working on some of the same cyber challenges together."

AvengerCon is an effort to bring the learning environment provided by security 
conferences such as DEFCON to a military and government community that wouldn't 
otherwise be available because of cost and bureaucratic complexity. Originally 
a training event organized by the 781st Military Intelligence Battalion at Fort 
Meade involving about 100 soldiers, AvengerCon has grown to 600 attendees and 
has gained the backing of Army Cyber Command and USCYBERCOM.

"My job, in part, is trying to figure out how to properly train soldiers in a 
field that doesn't have decades of standard operating procedures and clear 
paths for training to get to success," Capt. Joseph Dooley, an organizer of 
AvengerCon, told Ars. He said that this type of event offered "a unique 
opportunity for soldiers to individually be in a more unstructured environment 
where they can set their own agenda"—where they can pick things that they're 
interested in or feel they need training in without the usual constraints of 
formal Army training.

[...]

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