One month out from DEF CON!

This meeting featured two back to back talks:
Nintendo Switch (1) hacking by Remnant
and
A general DEF CON Primer

Our speaker this month came down with COVID last minute, and we instead occupied the meeting with casual hangout night, along with hacker movies!

Duald also brought a portable mock CCDC competition environment and some laptops for people to hack on during the meeting.

Even during a casual meeting, we still had a great turnout of 75 people!

This month’s talk came from a hardware hacking security local, Alex Lynd! Alex is known for his work at DevKitty, and for creating a cat-shaped console for hackers and makers!

This month also set a new attendance record of 90 people!

Talk title:
$5 Wireless Hacking with Microcontrollers by Alex Lynd

This month featured a talk on career development in infosec:
Starting, growing, and advancing your career in information security by Niko from OWASP San Diego

A new addition to our meetings is a Kindle to pass around with a QR code to join the IVU Discord made by our very own Remnant. The password from this month is expired, but show up to join the server as an Attendee!

(There is a challenge hidden on the kindle too!)

This month featured no talk, but two unique events!
Spring Cleaning Crapmeet
Bring in your half-finished projects, old tech, and forgotten gizmos and help them find a new home

Hebocon Combat Robot Tournament with Robartimie
Build the best worst combat robot out of trash, kids’ toys, and whatever you can find at the crapmeet! All comers welcome!

For those new to Hebocon, some helpful background info:
HEBOCON: The Robot Contest for Dummies

Happy Valentines Day!

For some, this Valentine’s day was shared with IVU members and the collective love for our gatherings 🙂

The talk this month was from an repeat speaker, and IVU helper – Ghriz!

Car Mods and Hacking by Ghriz

As many might recognize each month, Ghriz routinely rolls up each month with new fun and funky mods to his car. This talk came full circle on understanding his approach to modding his own cars!

Here is a modded car Ghriz is known to drive around and play music from during the after-talk parking lot con:

Happy New Year!

Our original speaker had a last minute scheduling conflict. As a last minute back up, Guillotine stepped up and gave a second iteration on their Quantum Computing talk from last year!

Outside of the talk, there were some Miku GFuel to share, along with some other creations!

Happy Holidays!

The talk this month featured a history lesson, and walk through tour of a collection of interesting “Electromechanical Curiosities”.

Talk:
A Brief History of Electro-Medical Quackery, and Other Curiosities by Time Capsule

Gobble Gobble!

This month’s IVU meeting featured:

What’s going on over those radios? by Ezemar
A talk about LoRa and LoRaWAN

Gear up for spooky season at IVU with two presentations this month:
Ada Lovelace 101 by AST
Ada Lovelace in terms your non-computer friends will understand 🙂
and
Heist Planning Open Forum with Rob
How would you look for an attack vector on something “Un-hackable”?

It’s another Friday the 13th, just in time for September’s Irvine Underground meeting!

This month, we originally planed to host two speakers: AST presenting Ada Lovelace 101, and XP on hacking credit card rewards. Unfortunately, AST was unable to make it to IVU this month, and Ellwood volunteered at the meeting to talk about setting up LLCs for fun and profit, making this a personal-finance themed IVU.

Also, someone printed an extra-large IVU nametag for the post-defcon IVU sticker swap.

This year, DEF CON 32 took place during IVU, so in addition to our standard meeting, we hosted a Defcon party with our friends at NULL:404.

Our in-person meeting was a great place to hang out and talk tech, as usual. As most folks were at Defcon, we only had about 20 attendees in Irvine, and did not have a featured presentation or speaker.

In addition, this marks three years in a row of IVU members placing in the DEF CON Scavenger Hunt!
This year, IVU took first and second place, with teams Bananarchy and rengerate 1. Pool’s Open

With 27 days until DEF CON, this month’s IVU meeting was focused on explaining the ins and outs of the new venue. Yaxis shared some helpful bits of advice for DC32, along with various members from the community. Timecapsule also gave away a few copies of his soldering project, a 2D6 dice roller.

Planning to attend DEFCON 32? Irvine Underground and Null:404 plan to host a party on Friday night!

Irvine Underground kicked off our mid-year meeting with a new milestone – eighty-six attendees!

This month, our original speaker couldn’t make it, so Guillotine stepped up with a half-hour talk on Quantum Computing. Stay tuned, because Guillotine will give a full, hour-long quantum computing talk soon.

We also featured a short DEF CON 32 primer, for everyone at IVU attending. IVU’s plans for DC32 to be announced soon!

Ninety days until DEF CON 32!

This month’s IVU marks a new milestone, where we livestreamed our entire IVU meeting via discord.

Originally, our planned speaker dropped last-minute, and two of our community members swooped in with a save at the last minute – lunchbucket presented a talk on Proxmox, while Ghriz shared his knowedge of tarantulas with the group.

See you in June!