An Interesting Observation from Bluehat #3

Last week I attended Bluehat; we hold these events twice a year and get some of the more interesting security researchers and pertinent topics in front of Microsoft engineers and senior execs. It’s valuable stuff.

On Thursday, I attended a number of sessions by Kev Dunn, Dave Litchfield, Alexander Kornbrust, Caleb Sima, Johnny Long and H.D. Moore.

But the session that blew me away was Kornbrust’s on Database Rootkits; however what amazed me was not the topic (which is a fascinating subject) but what happened at the start of the session. The room was full (as it was for all the sessions) with a bunch of people milling around at the back; so there were about 700 people in attendance.

Alex asked how many people work on SQL Server.

About 250 hands went up! Alex was floored.

I caught up with Alex after his session, and we talked for over two hours about database security, bugs, secure design, crypto, good and bad coding practices and so on. He was totally jazzed, like someone who had drank WWAAYYYY too much coffee, he was simply stunned that so many people attended his session from the SQL Server team.

He's a genuinely nice guy too :)