My experience at Disobey 2024 as a volunteer and everything I learnt from the event.
2.1.2024 - I get an email titled ‘Welcome to Disobey 2024! volunteering’ and me who was still recovering from the New Years eve has to double check it because I was so sure I was misreading it.
Shortly after there was a volunteer meetup which I attended and met all the cool people I was going to work with. I had heard about Disobey multiple times but never attended it (because its impossible to get tickets in time) but at the meetup I got to meet so many members of the community which were regulars and they all welcomed me excitedly. I found out that I was one of the few ‘new’ volunteers which were lucky and fast enough to fill the google form that Disobey posted on LinkedIn (thankyou LinkedIn notifications) apartly a lot of people want to volunteer at the biggest hacking event in the nordics :)
As a new volunteer I got a lot of freedom to choose what things I’d like to do during the event and pick my own schedule! Then once the foster was ready, suddenly it was go time and it was 15th of Feb, time for me to head to Helsinki for the best weekend ever. On the train to Helsinki, while I was working on my thesis, I was able to see in person how important it is to educate people about cyber security and to be aware of their surroundings. I could clearly shoulder surf someone for their banking credentials while they were changing their passwords on the train. And to top it off, they even had their user ID and password written on a piece of paper :)
Then after a short night’s sleep, I was ready to go to Kaapelitehdas for the debriefing with all the volunteers! We had a very nice introduction from all the main organisers of Disobey. Ben, Jarno and Ken said a few words and gave us some pointers but most of all told us to enjoy the event as well. Since I didn’t have any scheduled shifts at the start of the event I was just roaming around and familiarising myself with the venue, helping out wherever I could. Then suddenly I feel like I walked across a familiar face, not one that I know personally but one I’ve seen many times on YouTube!
Stök is just sitting there preparing for his talk and I have a fan boy moment incoming! A bit nervous I go up and introduce myself and then we end up talking for around half an hour, it was so much fun! We talked about what hacking is to him and how to stay motivated when dealing with annoying targets. I also shared a bit about my burnout when it came to bug bounties and how I had been taking time off from them, to which he said its very natural but I should pick up where I left off and just manage my time better. The best thing he told me was to always stop hacking before I was satisfied, ie always have 20% in the chamber and only use the 80%. Then I had to do some volunteer work so I left and sadly didnt get to meet him again for the rest of the event.
The start of the event was slow but it picked up very fast, there was a huge line at the entrance and I was running around being useful, from one corner of the venue to the other there was so much to do! Around 12:30 I decided to checkout the Community Village and thats where the rest of my day was spent :D
First I spent a good 20 minutes trying to complete a small puzzle at iki.fi stall which I ended up completing and got to take home with me! Then I headed over to the lock picking section and started to go through the lock picking introduction book that was lying around. I started with the clear look through, one pin lock and using the lock picks and although it was quite annoying slowly I got the hang of it and was able to get it to open!
The rest of the day went by pretty fast, I attended every talk I could and whenever I was free went back to try the locks. At 18:00 I had my first shift at the Info-desk and that went pretty fine as well!
My favourite talk of the day was by Stök which was about ANSI escape sequences and their use in log injection, the slides were really interactive, funny and kept the audience engaged. Having worked with ANSI escape codes before I was surprised and taken aback because the idea of injecting them into logs to alter their output was something that never came across my mind.
I also really liked Tomi Koski’s talk about Hardware Hacking on a budget and I hope to get into it once I get some time!
The day ended with me really tired but full of new stickers for my laptop and my hacking spirit back to its max! I walked a total of 10kms or 16,000+ steps.
The next day on Saturday, I woke up still pretty tired from all the walking so I decided to skip the morning briefing and go directly for the talk that I wanted to attend which was ‘I’M A SCRIPT KIDDIE, BYPASSING YOUR ANTIVIRUS AND EDR SYSTEMS’ by Anne Hautakangas, it was an interesting one since I am one of the script kiddie’s as well but I had to go do some volunteer work in the middle.
After some work I headed back to the lock picking station and continued my futile attempts at learning how to pick locks! I did progress slowly and got upto the 6 and 7 pin locks and in the end did managed to break them open. The rest of the day was full of helping out here and there and talking to a few companies! I did spend some time at the Nixu stall because I had a question about their hackin challenge! After that I collected a few stickers, talked about mentorship and the LahitSec both with Erik Taavila and talked to some other volunteers about their experience at the event!
The day was about to end for the attendees but only starting for us volunteers, after an amazing talk from Sami Laiho about Zero Trust, a concept I knew nothing much about. I started my second shift at the Info-desk and then had to help out at the Cloackroom. The closing ceremony was at 21:30 and it was fun to hear Ben’s closing remarks along with the results of all the CTFs. THEN back to the cloackroom where a huge rush was waiting for me, after that I helped out with the cleaning and packing of all the chairs, everyone helped out and we cleaned out FAST! Then I had my first and only beer of the event (very surprising) and too tired to go to the after party I headed back home for a good night sleep.
On Saturday I ended up walking around 8kms so around 12,000 steps. Got a few more stickers and made a few more connections!
Overall my experience as a volunteer was amazing, I met a lot of new people and saw irl the hacking community come alive! The organisation for the volunteers was really well done and we were well fed and cared of too! I will definitely love to go back next year and recommend it to anyone who is interested in it!