HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) returns to the Hotel Pennsylvania for its twelfth iteration this year, hosted by our friends at 2600. The biennial conference is one of the foremost hacker events, chock full of projects, talks, workshops, and more. We'll have a table in the vendor area, where you can stop by and become a member at a discount, and pick up our latest swag.

EFF Talks

Crossing the Border in the Age of Trump
Bill Budington, Kurt Opsahl
Friday July 20 at 3:oo PM in Vaughan
When we travel, we bring our lives with us. From financial records and personal photos to account passwords and even digital wallets, the information we carry on our devices can be extremely sensitive, and gives anyone with access to it an enormous amount of power over us. At the same time, TSA and border agents have shown increasing interest in gaining access to this information, putting us in a compromised situation and disrupting our travels. This talk will cover the legal protections that you have, and what you can do before, during, and after you travel to protect your data from prying eyes. This includes the legal and practical precedents that have been established when crossing both domestic and international borders, the technological capabilities of border agents, techniques that are likely to become more prevalent, and what tools you have in your digital toolbox to ensure your data is kept safe.

Dark Caracal: How to Burn a Spy Agency and Get Away with It
Cooper Quintin
Friday July 20 at 6:oo PM in Vaughan
The nature of state surveillance is changing, and "cyberwar" is becoming cheaper. Stuxnet, Fancy Bear, and WannaCry are some of the more infamous examples of state-sponsored hacking. But what happens when a nation state on a shoestring budget wants to run a global espionage campaign? And more importantly, what happens when they are stupid about it and get caught? This talk will discuss the changing nature of state surveillance, the details of a new state-sponsored malware campaign uncovered by EFF and Lookout, and what hackers can do to stop governments engaging in targeted digital surveillance.

Ask the EFF: The Year in Digital Civil Liberties
Kurt Opsahl, Vivian Brown, Bill Budington, Sydney Li, Cooper Quintin
Saturday July 21 at 1:00 PM in Vaughan
Get the latest information about how the law is racing to catch up with technological change. This session will include updates on current EFF issues, such as the government’s effort to undermine encryption (and add backdoors), the fight for network neutrality, discussion of EFF’s technology projects to spread encryption across the web and emails, updates on cases and legislation affecting security research, and much more. Half the session will be given over to question-and-answer, so it’s your chance to ask EFF questions about the law and technology issues that are important to you.

Being Mean to Software Patents
Daniel Nazer
Saturday July 21 at 9:00 PM in Ritchie
EFF has a "Stupid Patent of the Month" blog series, which highlights some of the silliest patents and the most destructive patent troll campaigns. It has also gotten EFF sued - twice. People don’t like it when you say that their stupid patents are stupid. Fortunately, both times EFF fought back and won. But how is the policy battle going? Did the Supreme Court get rid of software patents in a 2014 decision? Is the USPTO still churning out terrible patents? Will Congress do anything? This talk will revisit some of the greatest hits from the Stupid Patent of the Month series and give you the big picture about the fight against software patents.

Securing the Delivery of Email
Sydney Li
Sunday July 22 at 3:00 PM in Ritchie
In early 2014, research revealed the horrible state of email over TLS. About half of email was sent in plaintext and, for the email sent over TLS, half of those servers presented certificates that were invalid or self-signed. On top of this, some governments and ISPs were regularly downgrading SMTP connections to plaintext. Since then, there have been multiple efforts by IETF and large mail server operators to secure the delivery of email. This talk will summarize the state of secure email delivery in 2018 and discuss ongoing initiatives and efforts to protect against MitM and downgrade attacks, including MTA-STS, DANE, and STARTTLS Everywhere.

Meet Up with Us!

On Friday night July 20, from 8pm to 10pm, we're having an EFF meetup for supporters and their guests near the event. If you'd like to attend, email us at membership@eff.org for location and instructions.

More information about HOPE is available here. We'll see you there!