This month we are joined by Meander who will be presenting their talk “Back to Basics: Why we get it wrong, and how to get it right”:
Cybersecurity isn’t just about firewalls and compliance checkboxes- its about strategy, leadership, culture, and more. Despite increasing investments in tools and frameworks, breaches and disruptions continue to plague organizations of all sizes and industries. Why? Because technology alone doesn’t solve security challenges- but adding strong governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) can.
Bio: Mea Clift is a distinguished cybersecurity executive with a multi-decade career rooted in excellence, innovation, and mission-driven leadership. As Principal Executive Advisor for Cyber Risk Engineering at Liberty Mutual, she provides strategic guidance to underwriters and insureds on emerging cyber risks, maturity models, and industry trends—bridging the gap between cybersecurity strategy and enterprise risk.
With deep expertise in governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), Mea is a champion of NIST-based frameworks, fundamental security principles, and supply chain security. Her background spans critical infrastructure protection, regulatory alignment, and the development of governance structures that embed security across the business. She is widely respected for her ability to translate complex technical risks into clear, compelling language for executives and stakeholders alike.
A 2025 Honoree of the SC Media Women in Cyber Award and 2024 Cyversity Educator of the Year, published author, and active mentor, Mea teaches Fundamentals of GRC and advocates for diversity in cybersecurity through many organizations including Wicys, Cyversity and ISACA. Outside of her professional work, she is a passionate quilt historian and educator living in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she shares her love of textiles and design alongside her three greyhounds.
Meeting will be on Discord. If you need an invite, look no further.
Talk starts at 6:12 PM U.S. Central, but feel free to hop in early and chat.
This month we are joined again by Drakespirit who will be presenting their talk “AI in War Games Simulations: Shall we play a game?”:
We all know AI can deliver on a solid chocolate chip cookie recipe as a pirate, and can even be used to do some basic chemical analysis if you want to hack together a lava cake in a pinch. But can a language model help in a war games simulation? Join us as we examine a use case where one team was using AI in a war game simulation and what happened.
Bio: [404 NOT FOUND].
Meeting will be on Discord. If you need an invite, look no further.
Talk starts at 6:12 PM U.S. Central, but feel free to hop in early and chat.
This month we are joined by Ashley Gay who will be presenting her talk “Ashley’s Crash Course to Computing”:
A talk in which Ashley attempts to explain low level function of computers, and its implications on cybersecurity, including logic gates, transistors, pipelines, as well as the technical reasons why you may not be getting good performance in games, and what actually bottlenecks computing. This talk will also cover a history of ROM.
Bio: Hi, my name is Ashley Gay and I use She/Her pronouns. I’m an Offensive Security Engineer specializing in low level hardware.
Meeting will be on Discord. If you need an invite, look no further.
Talk starts at 6:12 PM U.S. Central, but feel free to hop in early and chat.
This month we are joined by @TactiFail who will be presenting his talk “Chapter 1: Designing Graphical Interface…”:
Serial interfaces to conference badge challenges are almost a given at this point, and the badge from the recent SecretCon 3 in Minnesota was no exception. In this talk, Tacti will briefly cover the badge’s interactive challenge element, then go a bit into serial communications, and finally take a slight detour into Unity game development, ultimately leading to a demo of a quick and dirty 3D interface wrapper around the badge’s serial challenges.
Bio: Tacti is the DC612 lead, but not POC in case any Defcon staff are reading this 😉 He does infosec for a living, hacking for fun, and cooking because if he has to eat, it may as well taste good.
Meeting will be on Discord. If you need an invite, look no further.
Talk starts at 6:12 PM U.S. Central, but feel free to hop in early and chat.
— TactiFail (hey, that’s me!)
P.S. Please note that there will be no meeting for August next month, as that is when Defcon proper occurs. We take that month off, as a lil treat.
NOTE: This is the same site from last year (2024) and we’ll likely be sticking with it going forward if possible.
What:
Food! Bring food and we will grill it, or just show up and eat.
No frozen grilling items please – they take forever to thaw
Hackers! We have been told there may be hackers in attendance.
Music? Games? Prizes? Stickers? Whatever you bring!
Beeeeeees! Due to budget cuts, we will again not be providing bees this year. BYOBeeeeee.
Cost: Zero dollars!
Nobody is required to bring anything or pay anything to attend and eat, but keep in mind that our official budget is also zero dollars, so we will only have what we all contribute.
This is a group-led event, so it is only as good as we make it. We have a sign-up sheet here to track what everyone is bringing, please fill it out if you plan on bringing stuff or want ideas for what’s missing. We always need food, but paper plates, plastic utensils, and napkins never go out of style. If someone wants to bring musical entertainment, or games, or a vulnerable WiFi spot, all the better! This is also considered a “family event” so alcohol is not technically allowed per the permit (I will not be checking contents of personal bottles however).
A quick note on weather: Last year we had some heavy rain toward the end. I’ll be bringing a portable grill to move things under the pavilion if necessary, but barring a literal tornado we’re planning on keeping this going rain or shine.
For those of you keeping score at home, this will be our fifth year running:
