I visited SEC-T 0x11 (2025) Conference and Community Event.

Why did I attend SEC-T?

There was a couple of reasons for me deciding to visit SEC-T.

  • I’ve attended SEC-T since 2014.
  • Säkerhetspodcasten used to be guests / workers at SEC-T several years, producing video and audio content for both the pod and for the conference.
  • SEC-T also is a supportive organization to Security Fest and provided various mentorship, support and connections when the Gothenburg conference was set up.
  • But these last years we’ve happily downgraded into regular attendees just here to attend the conference.

SEC-T concept

About SEC-T describes itself as:

SEC-T is an independent non-profit organization focused on spreading understanding about information security within the technology arena. SEC-T’s foundational pillars are:

  • Provide community events to inspire people to enter or stay in the field of information security research.
  • Be a non-profit organization.
  • Be independent from other organizations.
  • Support the global conference ecosystem in a positive and productive way.

[…]

You could also phrase it as one of the early Defcon/BSides/… similar conferences in Sweden. And currently the largest “hackish” IT Security conference in Sweden.

Talks

These are the talks I enjoyed the most:

  • Applied Detections Bypass by int0x80. Learn how rules can be bypassed and evolve your rules to strongly protect your assets.
  • Attacking and defending GitHub Actions by Simon Gerst. Very well and clearly presented. What is the basic primitives for securing and attacking github actions/workflows?
  • Offensive SIEM: When the Blue Team Switches Perspective by Erkan Ekici & Shanti Lindström. Windows and End point protection focus. Make your SIEM team evolve. SIEM & system, security other tools includes what defenders needs to proactively find their own misconfigurations. Large organizations may also find privilege escalation vulnerabilities in commercial software / drivers they employ.

Runner ups, other talks I consider well worth seeing:

Playlist: SEC-T 2025.

Villages

  • Lock Pick Village I had some minor successes opening like three locks while listening to the conference in my headphones. Honestly a lot of luck involved, my lock picking skills are pretty terrible.
    I think I most enjoyed a 3 digit code lock which I first cracked using exhaustive search, taking… a bit more than 500 tries… Then I concluded I had initially been correct that you can kind-of identify the code with your eyes closed feeling the mechanism. But if the digit is 7 you may incorrectly identify it as 6 or 8. And one of the wheels had some false set on the other side, so if the number was 7 you could misidentify it as 3. So while the lock appeared to have much quicker solutions than exhaustive search, it was not easy to exactly identity the correct code with feel alone.
  • Hardware Village
  • Sticker Village
  • CTF Village

Other…

  • I met a few colleagues from old employers and customers.
  • I said hello to Ulf Frisk, who did amazing presentations some years ago.
  • Cyber Chats & Chill was introduced to me by a mutual acquaintance. CC&C would be doing interviews with some of the speakers.
  • SEC-T is growing really huge. There’s thousands of faces here, it is hot and crowded. Personally I tended to keep in de-populated areas like the upper balcony near hardware village, rather than being in the cramped areas.
  • Live-steam is magical if you want to practice “less social conferencing”, so all prop’s to SEC-T’s video crew for a great live-stream.
  • Exploring Stockholm. While we all tout “The West Coast is the Best Coast”, honestly Stockholm has plenty of places worth seeing, with nice parks and alleys not far from Münchenbryggeriet. Skinnarviksberget, Monteliusvägen, Reimersholmen, Sjövikstorget, Slussen, Gamla Stan etc was included in my speedrun of Stockholm.