We successfully exploited two discontinued network devices at DistrictCon’s inaugural Junkyard competition in February, winning runner-up for Most Innovative Exploitation Technique. Our exploit chains demonstrate why end-of-life hardware poses persistent security risks.
At EthCC[8], Trail of Bits blockchain security engineer Nicolas Donboly laid out a clear, actionable path for aspiring smart contract auditors, drawing from his own experience transitioning from a non-technical background into a leading security role.
EuroLLVM is a developer meeting focused on projects under the LLVM Foundation umbrella that live in the LLVM GitHub monorepo, like Clang and—more recently, thanks to machine learning research—the MLIR framework. Trail of Bits, which has a history in compiler engineering and all things LLVM, sent a bunch of […]
In March, Trail of Bits engineers traveled to the vibrant (and only slightly chilly) city of Toronto to attend Real World Crypto 2024, a three-day event that hosted hundreds of brilliant minds in the field of cryptography. We also attended three associated events: the Real World Post-Quantum Cryptography (RWPQC) workshop, the Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) […]
Last month, two of our engineers attended the 37th Chaos Communication Congress (37C3) in Hamburg, joining thousands of hackers who gather each year to exchange the latest research and achievements in technology and security. Unlike other tech conferences, this annual gathering focuses on the interaction of technology and society, covering such topics as politics, entertainment, […]
One of the biggest challenges for blockchain developers is objectively assessing their security posture and measuring how it progresses. To address this issue, a working group of Web3 security experts, led by Trail of Bits CEO Dan Guido, met earlier this year to create a simple test for profiling the security of blockchain teams. We […]
Last month, hundreds of cryptographers descended upon Tokyo for the first Real World Crypto Conference in Asia. As in previous years, we dispatched a handful of our researchers and engineers to present and attend the conference. What sets RWC apart from other conferences is that it strongly emphasizes research, collaborations, and advancements in cryptography that […]
After two long years of lockdowns, virtual meetups, quarantines, and general chaos, the Python community gathered en masse to Salt Lake City for PyCon 2022. Two of our engineers attended the conference, and we are happy to report that the Python community is not only alive and well but also thriving, with […]
At Trail of Bits we do more than just security audits: We also push the boundaries of research in vulnerability detection tools, regularly present our work in academic conferences, and review interesting papers from other researchers (see our recent Real World Crypto and Financial Crypto recaps). In this spirit, we and Northern Arizona University are […]
A few weeks ago, we went to the 24th Financial Cryptography (FC) conference and the Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts (WTSC), where we presented our work on smart contract bug categorization (see our executive summary) and a poster on Echidna. Although FC is not a blockchain conference, it featured several blockchain-oriented presentations this year and […]
Over 642 brilliant cryptographic minds gathered for Real World Crypto 2020, an annual conference that brings together cryptographic researchers with developers implementing cryptography in the wild. Overall, RWC 2020 was an impressive conference that demonstrated some amazing work. Here we explore three major themes that emerged: Crypto bugs are everywhere…Whether it’s a somewhat unsurprising Bleichenbacher […]
A few weeks ago I had the inspiring experience of attending the annual Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), the world’s largest gathering of women in technology. Over four days in Orlando, Florida, GHC hosted a slew of workshops and presentations, plus a massive career fair with over […]
Has it really been 3 months since Trail of Bits hosted QueryCon? We’ve had such a busy and productive summer that we nearly forgot to go back and reflect on the success of this event! On June 20-21, Trail of Bits partnered with Kolide and Carbon Back to host the 2nd annual QueryCon, at the […]
This year’s IACR Crypto conference was an excellent blend of far-out theory and down-to-earth pragmatism. A major theme throughout the conference was the huge importance of getting basic cryptographic primitives right. Systems ranging from TLS servers and bitcoin wallets to state-of-the-art secure multiparty computation protocols were broken when one small sub-component was either chosen poorly […]
Three weeks ago, we presented our work on Slither at WETSEB, an ICSE workshop. ICSE is a top-tier academic conference, focused on software engineering. This edition of the event went very well. The organizers do their best to attract and engage industrials to the discussions. The conference had many talks in parallel. We wish we […]
QueryCon takes place this week at the Convene Conference Center in Downtown Manhattan, Thursday June 20th- Friday June 21st. If you don’t have a ticket yet, get one while you can. QueryCon is an annual conference about osquery, the open source project that’s helping many top tech companies manage their endpoints. We’ve been big fans […]
We have published an academic paper on Slither, our static analysis framework for smart contracts, in the International Workshop on Emerging Trends in Software Engineering for Blockchain (WETSEB), colocated with ICSE. Our paper shows that Slither’s bug detection outperforms other static analysis tools for finding issues in smart contracts in terms of speed, robustness, and […]
Exciting news: We’re hosting the second annual QueryCon on June 20th-21st in New York City, co-sponsored by Kolide and Carbon Black! Register here QueryCon has become the foremost event for the osquery and osql open-source community. QueryCon brings together core maintainers, developers, and end-users to teach, discuss, and collaborate on Facebook’s award-winning open-source endpoint detection […]
The Trail of Bits SummerCon Fellowship program is now accepting applications from emerging security researchers with excellent project ideas. Fellows will explore their research topics with our guidance and then present their findings at SummerCon 2019. We will be reserving at least 50% of our funding for marginalized, female-identifying, transgender, and non-binary candidates. If you’re […]
Remember last December’s Empire Hacking? The one where we dedicated the event to sharing the best information about blockchain and smart contract security? Let’s do that again, and let’s make it a tradition; a half-day mini conference focused exclusively on a single topic every December. On December 12, please join us at Buzzfeed’s NYC offices […]
We wanted to make up for missing the first three Devcons, so we participated in this year’s event through a number of talks, a panel, and two trainings. For those of you who couldn’t join us, we’ve summarized our contributions below. We hope to see you there next year. Using Manticore and Symbolic Execution to […]
We have a soft spot in our hearts for SummerCon. This event, the longest-running hacker conference in the US, is a great chance to host hacker friends from around the world in NYC, catch up in person, and learn about delightfully weird security topics. It draws a great crowd, ranging from “hackers to feds to […]
Sometimes a conference just gets it right. Good talks, single track, select engaged attendees, and no sales talks. It’s a recipe for success that Kolide got right on its very first try with QueryCon, the first-ever osquery conference. It’s no secret that we are huge fans of osquery, Facebook’s award-winning open source endpoint detection tool. […]
Break out your guayabera, it’s time for Infiltrate. Trail of Bits has attended every Infiltrate and has been a sponsor since 2015. The majority of the company will be in attendance this year (18 people!) and we’ll be swapping shirts and swag again. We’re looking forward to catching up with the latest research presented there […]
I recently had the privilege of giving a keynote at BSidesLisbon. I had a great time at the conference, and I’d like to thank Bruno Morisson for inviting me. If you’re into port, this is the conference for you! I recommend that anyone in the area consider attending next year. I felt there was a […]
